


All Those Little Pieces

by Ellessey



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Domestic, Explicit Sexual Content, Gentle Kissing, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Panic Attacks, Recovered Memories, Requited Love, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-01-03 21:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21186257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellessey/pseuds/Ellessey
Summary: Bucky blinks at him. "You’re sure your brain wasn’t damaged?""Yes,"Steve sputters. "Why do you keep asking that?""I almost killed you," Bucky says, still with almost no emotion in his voice. It’s unclear if he’s questioning Steve because he can’t seem to string a sentence together, or because it’s crazy to tell Bucky he’s still a hero after almost being murdered by him, but it doesn’t matter."You didn’t, though," Steve says firmly. "And you’re… here."--Steve has never forgotten Bucky Barnes. Not their childhood together, not the horror of the moment Bucky fell too far for him to reach, and not the way he's loved him all the while.Bucky has forgotten everything about Steve, at least at first. But there's still a feeling there, warm in his chest—and maybe now that he's found his way back to Steve Rogers and his sunny apartment, there's a chance it might turn into something more.





	1. Chapter 1

It's been two weeks since Steve fell out of the Helicarrier, and even now—as he finally leaves Manhattan behind and enters his D.C. apartment that should only smell like stale air and emptiness—he swears he can still catch the scent of the river on his skin.

"You don't smell that?" he'd asked Sam just before stepping out of the car Tony sent them home in.

"What?" Sam asked. "Antiseptic? Hospital? You still smell like hospital, man. Get in there and take a shower."

"Sure," Steve said, leaning over awkwardly, still a little too stiff from his injuries to give a proper hug. "Thanks for everything."

Sam rolled his eyes, as if the hours he spent at Steve's bedside—reading to him, playing him music, listening to his continual griping about how goddamn long he'd been unnecessarily kept lying down—didn't warrant any kind of gratitude. 

"Take care of yourself. Call me if you need anything."

Steve had nodded and promised he would, but there's really only one thing he needs right now. 

He leans back against his front door and closes his eyes. Finds the scent of wet earth and the pleasant musk of moving water still clinging to him. Maybe it's not really there at all, maybe he just wants it to be, because he wasn't in that water alone and he can't stop _ thinking _ about that. About how the only way he made it out of the Potomac is because the Winter Soldier must have followed him into it and dragged him onto its shore. There was no one else there when they found him semi-conscious and shivering. Just the grey sky above him, and heavy boot prints in the mud, walking away and leaving him alive.

Sam says he should try to stop thinking about it. Reminds him over and over that the Winter Soldier isn't Bucky, even if he wears his face, but Steve can't make sense of that. The Winter Soldier wouldn't have plunged into the river after a stranger to save his life, but Bucky… he would follow Steve into the dark over and over again, no questions asked.

He sighs and opens his eyes, takes in the bland furniture and blank walls. He's never quite known how to make this place feel like home, even after two years of living in the future. Home is windows open to the streets of Brooklyn, the heat of summer sticky on his skin and curling in Bucky's hair. It's two narrow cots fighting for space in one narrow room, one that never felt as small as this place he lives now. Closed in on itself without Bucky's laughing and teasing and terrible off-key singing to fill it up. 

It was one thing when Steve first moved in here, when he thought Bucky was dead. Lost to the ice seventy years in the past. But he's _ alive, _and he's not here, and so no, sorry Sam, Steve cannot stop thinking about this. Even if it's making him restless and short of breath in a way he hasn't felt since he was twenty. 

_ Nat, _ he texts. _ Do me a favor? _

_ You've been home literally for two minutes. No. Take a nap. _

Steve expected this, and he’s also unsurprised by the way she ignores his call, but he has no problem doing it again and again until she finally answers.

"Oh my God. I'm going to go over there and tranquilize you."

"I'd... love to see you try that, but Nat, listen—"

"Would you? Would you really like to see me knocking your ass out? Because—"

"_Nat." _

She huffs and doesn't say anything more, which is likely a direct result of the desperation in his voice. That's fine. He _ is _desperate, so what the hell.

"I have to find him. I know you can help me."

"His _ job _ is to find people, Steve. I guarantee you he knows where you are. If he wanted to talk to you, he'd be talking to you."

Sam has said this too, but Steve doesn't think it's that simple. He saw the Soldier's face, that wild confusion in his eyes when he'd been about to kill Steve and then _ didn't, _ and didn't seem to know why. Maybe he just isn't even sure what's happening.

"He might... need a push," he says.

"Does he really seem like the type you should be pushing?"

Steve isn't stupid. He knows there's a difference between the boy who used to wrestle his own woolen socks overtop of Steve’s to keep him warm (only when Steve was too far gone with fever to tell Bucky to fuck off and stop babying him), and the hard edged, metal-armed man who fractured Steve's face not long ago. Obviously. He gets that. 

But Bucky—the Soldier, whoever he is on top of being Steve's only family—didn't kill him, and that’s something. Maybe it's setting the bar low, but Steve's willing to take what he can get right now.

"I can handle it. Just point me in the right direction. Please, Natasha."

"That doesn't work when I can't see your puppy dog eyes," she says dryly.

"_Please,"_ he says again, putting as much puppy dog in his voice as he can. He's going to look for Bucky too, he's going to do everything he can, but Natasha is trained and connected in ways he'll never be. And with every day that passes, Bucky could be getting farther and farther away. 

"I don't know. I’ll consider it, if I have time," Natasha says, which is just her way of saying yes without actually saying it. If the answer was no, she'd be very clear about it. "Get some rest, and don't call me again for at least twenty-four hours or I'll put you back in the hospital myself."

Steve grins, and it's probably a little manic but that's okay. There's no one here to see it. 

"Done," he promises. He'll be too busy for phone calls anyway. He has a ghost to find, and more haunts than he can count to start looking in. 

* * *

The soldier has spent exactly two weeks being purposefully aimless, and that's not a state he knows how to exist comfortably in. He hasn't known anything but direction in decades upon decades. Eliminate his target, return to his handler. Open his mouth for the rubber bite guard when he's told to. Keep it shut when the ice starts to bite him and all he wants to do is scream.

It should be freeing, maybe, to currently not have to do those things, but mostly it's just settled on him like a kind of paralysis. He didn't eliminate his target, he didn't return to his handler, so now what? There's nothing to tell him. No memories of anything coming after a mission, other than a mission report. 

He can't report back though, not when he's failed. Not when he could be working on succeeding and is choosing not to. He's _ choosing, _ and it's so goddamn terrifying it's all he can do. He's been hunkering down in a drafty, abandoned warehouse, waiting for his right shoulder to heal, and doing absolutely nothing else but making that choice over and over again. Don't report back. Don't eliminate the target, but _ why? _ Just because of the high of doing something he isn't supposed to? Or because he really doesn't want to kill the man with the star in the center of his chest? The one who called the soldier by a name that doesn't belong to him. 

He doesn't know. He doesn't know. He doesn't even remember the man's name, beyond Captain America. He doesn't know why, when the man said those words just before he fell, the soldier felt them like glass shattering in his chest.

_ I'm with you till the end of the line. _

Why? What the hell does that even mean? How is he ever supposed to find out if he kills the only person who can tell him? The person who somehow made it possible for the soldier to be sitting here right now, _ not _ in that gripping, metal chair. _ Not _ in the chamber of killing cold that he’s stepped into willingly time and time again, because his body remembers it’s not worth the fight, even if his brain is too fuzzy to tell him exactly what will happen if he doesn’t comply. He’s right here, in this place he chose to enter and chose to stay in, and he’s pretty damn sure this has never happened before. 

_ I’m with you till the end of the line. _

That's great, that’s real good to know, but who the fuck are you?

It takes another two days of leaving the warehouse only to steal something to eat before the soldier feels ready to make more than one decision at a time. Decision one, don’t kill the target. Decision two, learn more about him. It’s not like the soldier isn’t uniquely qualified to do this, to acquire information and act on it. He’s goddamn excellent at this. He _ shaped the century, _ whatever that means. It’s just that he’s never had a mission that wasn’t given to him by someone else, and it makes him a little nauseous every time he thinks about it too much. Like his brain is slightly off its axis. Which… it probably is. 

He’s awake though, untethered, and he has answers to find. 

There are a lot more of them than he expects waiting for him inside the Smithsonian. He goes there for the advertised Captain America exhibit, and it doesn’t disappoint. He learns that the man’s real name is Steve Rogers, and that he used to be skinny as a rail, way back in the early 40s. (That should be impossible, but so should the soldier’s own ability to shape an entire century, so...). He learns that a photo of Steve Rogers with slight, hunched shoulders and a narrow, stubborn jaw gives the soldier the glass shattering feeling all over again. 

And then the soldier finds himself, in the most literal sense. His own face on a black and white memorial that calls him Bucky Barnes. A fallen comrade.

_ Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. _

Well, _ his _ name was, anyway. This round faced, tired-eyed boy who looks like he’s definitely seen too much, but not nearly as much as the soldier has. This boy who was apparently Steve Rogers’ best friend until his death in 1945. The soldier lets out a quiet puff of air at that, because he’s died so many times by now he couldn’t even hope to count it all up. 

Then he catches sight of the little video playing. Soundless, colorless clips of Steve Rogers after the super serum that made those narrow shoulders strong and broad. Bucky Barnes is there too, looking less tired-eyed as he laughs with Steve, smile wide and natural. The soldier rarely looks at his own reflection, but he knows his face hasn’t looked like that in… not in any memory that still belongs to him. 

He feels less glass shattery and significantly more nauseous now, with his brain chasing its own tail trying to put together these images around him with the only version of himself he knows. This fallen, honored soldier that has his face, and the honorless assassin that he actually is. Was. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know how he "died," only that it’s been the cold that’s gotten him every time since then, and he hates it more than anything. It’s the reason he’s wearing a jacket, over a sweater, over a thermal undershirt now, and still feels ready to start shaking. That might just be how jarring it is to know he was a whole other person though. One who made Steve Rogers smile instead of breaking his face. One who maybe isn't completely dead, if the burning in the soldier's chest and gut as he watches the videos over and over again means anything. 

It's a physical response, not a mental one. He doesn't remember, not any of these things. The Howling Commandos, the blue peacoat, the sound of Steve Rogers' laughter that the video doesn't share with him. But he watches the way Steve's eyes curve with his smile, the way the two men turn toward each other like magnets, and he feels it almost like ice. The same all over kind of burning as the cryo-chamber, except it's not shutting him down, it's waking him up. 

So mission two is complete, and mission one still stands. No killing the target. _ No _returning to base and letting them take everything he learned today away from him. He has to clench his fists in his jacket pockets to keep the trembling in check as he walks out of the museum, but he makes another decision as he goes.

Mission three, or… two, he supposes, since the old mission two has been cleared now. He doesn't usually have multiple missions, and his head is spinning, and it's too cold in D.C. It's hard to think with all of this, with the recorded voice from the museum still droning in his head. 

_ Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield. _

Well they're good and separated now, but the soldier wants more answers. He wants more memories in his head than gunshots and blood and blackout pain, and he only knows one way to try to make that happen. 

So, mission two: find the target.

And mission three: stop calling him that. This is the soldier's mission, not HYDRA's, and he's not going to kill Steve Rogers. He just wants to hear him talk again, and find out if he has any more magic phrases that will break things apart in the soldier and set a little more of him free.

Maybe also mission four: stop considering everything a mission. They're _ decisions_, now. The soldier used to be a person, one who grew up in Brooklyn with a skinny boy named Steve, and people like that don't have missions. They just make decisions and they make plans. The soldier has a plan. 

Find Steve.

* * *

It feels like Steve should be better at this, at finding Bucky. He managed to follow him into the war against all odds. He dropped out of a plane in Austria to find him strapped to Zola's table and get him the hell out of there. And he found him countless times before that too, but to be fair, it never used to be hard. Usually, he only had to look to his left or right and there Bucky was, heavy arm slung across Steve's shoulder on a quiet walk home from work. Or with his body curled around Steve's, chest to back, if it was an especially cold night.

So maybe it's not that surprising that Steve's having a hard time. Maybe he needed more practice. 

He's trying though, while Natasha talks to her sources and investigates crumbling HYDRA bases, and Sam follows leads even though he still thinks it's a fool's errand. 

"_If _he hasn't gone back to HYDRA, they'll be looking for him. He's gonna have to be more of a ghost than he's ever been," he'd said.

"He hasn't gone back to HYDRA," Steve said automatically, jotting down another note on his own list of leads. All the places he can ever remember being with Bucky, places that might mean something to him. 

They haven’t found Bucky yet, but they’ve found out plenty about him, since Natasha turned up with a thick file she'd managed to procure from Kiev. Full of so many things Steve can’t think about too much because he knows now, why Bucky isn’t really Bucky anymore. Why his face is so blank, why he moves like a predator. How HYDRA was able to break him apart and keep him fighting their battles for all these years. It’s bad enough that Steve let him fall off that train. It’s unbearable, knowing everything that came after it.

There’s no way though, after all of that, after whatever happened up on the Helicarrier—when Bucky was clearly supposed to kill Steve, and then risked his own life to save him—there’s no way he would go back to HYDRA if he had the chance to go somewhere else. Steve just has to figure out where he _ would _go. 

He's come to the end of his list now though, after spending the last two days in Brooklyn. He tried the alley they met in, the diner where they'd share a slice of pie whenever they had the money, and the last building they'd lived in, which was gone and replaced with something newer but still ugly. The last stop he made was the corner where they'd said goodbye, right before Bucky shipped off. Where Steve had let himself go soft for just a minute and buried his face in the stiff fabric of Bucky's jacket, and Bucky had cupped the back of his head and held him close. The way Steve always wanted him to but was afraid to ask for. 

It hadn't meant anything, of course. It was just fear and adrenaline and anticipation for the war on Bucky's part, even if it was something else on Steve's. And then Bucky was gone anyway, and the next time they'd hugged he'd seemed so much smaller. With haunted eyes and a tremor in his hands when Steve wrapped him up in his arms, feeling like the world had been turned upside down.

_ No luck, _ he tells Sam by text. _ Almost home. _

_ Sorry Cap. I'm out of town still...drinks when I get back? _

Steve sends back a thumbs up and slips his phone in his jacket pocket. He'd thought that surely, since Bucky saved him (which Sam still thinks is up in the air), that meant some part of him remembered Steve. And that maybe he'd remember other things too, maybe be drawn to his roots like Steve was when he first came out of the ice. 

Even if he had though, it would take some kind of miracle for Steve to happen upon the same place at the same time as him. A miracle, or Bucky choosing to be found, which is what Steve was really hoping for. 

He keeps hoping that Natasha is right and Bucky knows exactly where he is. That he'll be waiting there, just like he was so many times when they were kids. Leaning outside Steve's door with one foot propped up behind him. Arms crossed and a cocky smile on his face, ready to tell Steve some bullshit story just to make him laugh. 

He's not, of course. There's no one waiting by the door, no one waiting in the quiet living room inside. Everything looks exactly as it did when Steve left it, and it almost makes him turn right around and leave again. He's so sick of the quiet and the empty spaces. Maybe he should go live in the Tower like Tony wants him to after all. Maybe he should just go there tonight. Throw a few more clean things in his already packed bag and just—

He stops. Everything is _ not _ just as he left it, because he can't think of a single time he's bothered to close his bedroom door, ever—and here it is, pulled tight. He left his shield _ in _ his bedroom, so that's not going to do him any good. But he has his fists, and after a moment's pause with his hand resting on the handle, he turns it and eases it open. 

_ If _he had really entertained the idea of Bucky finding him, he would have expected him to be waiting right at the door, maybe with weapons drawn. Or to be hiding, surveying the situation with a sniper’s eye, ready to be the first to make a move. In control of the situation in every way.

He would not, in any scenario, have imagined this. The Winter Soldier curled on his side. Dark hair spread across Steve’s pillow, covers drawn up high, one hand in a loose fist beneath his chin. 

Steve does not have one fucking clue what to do. He’s afraid to even breathe. How can Bucky—the _ Soldier, _ whatever he is—how can he just _ be here, _ unaware and defenseless? How can he have his cheek pressed into Steve’s sheets and his body curved the way Steve has seen it a thousand and one times? How can he look so much like Bucky, _ his _ Bucky, that it’s like they’ve gone back in time and this is just another night. With just enough space on the edge there for Steve to crawl into bed and fit himself against the line of Bucky’s back. 

He doesn’t do this. He takes one step, and the almost imperceptible rustling of his sock against the carpet has Bucky wide eyed and awake. Back pressed up against the headboard, and metal arm glinting in the low light from the bedside lamp.

"Sorry!" Steve says, even though all he did was come home and walk into his own bedroom. "I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—shit, I can’t believe you’re here! I just—I don't know what to… _ hi," _he finishes lamely. 

_ Well fucking done, Rogers. Surely at some point you could have at least thought about what you’d _ say _ to him if you found him. _

Bucky just looks back at him evenly though, less alarmed now, but still with no warmth or recognition. "Hi," he says back, letting the metal arm settle at his side. 

"Are you… what are you, uh… what—"

"Was your brain damaged? In the fall?" Bucky asks, and Steve has to hold in an undignified squawk.

"_No, _my brain is fine," he retorts, not adding that if anything had damaged his brain it would have been Bucky’s fist. He doesn’t care about that, he just cares that Bucky is here, and he seems slightly more human than he did the last time Steve saw him. Definitely more than the first time he did, when Steve didn’t know he was Bucky at all. Just a death machine all dressed in black.

"Oh," Bucky says, so blandly that Steve still has no idea if he was asking out of concern, or if he just thinks Steve is an idiot. 

"I’m just _ surprised, _ I’m… do you, I mean do you remember me? Is that why you’re here?"

Bucky draws his knees up, pulling them close to his chest. It’s a strange image, this big, broad man trying to make himself small. It makes Steve want to wrap himself around Bucky, tell him how goddamn sorry he is that they got to this place where neither of them know each other at all.

"Not really," Bucky says. "Not… with my head."

"Okay," Steve says, even though he doesn’t know what that means. Bucky’s here. He’s here, he’s here, he’s here, and he’s not trying to leave even though Steve’s stepping closer now, taking a seat at the end of the bed. "That’s okay. That’s… I’m Steve. Rogers."

"I know."

"Oh." Steve blinks. "But you—"

"I went to the museum. Learned all about little Steve Rogers and his best friend Bucky Barnes. _ Fallen comrade." _

"Ah," Steve says, wincing at the detachment in Bucky’s voice. The slight hint of derision. Is that directed at him? At both of them?

"They should take it down."

"The… exhibit?"

"I’m not a hero."

"Oh, Bucky no, you’re… I know what HYDRA did to you. That’s… this wasn’t your fault."

Bucky blinks at him. "You’re sure your brain wasn’t damaged?"

"_Yes," _Steve sputters. "Why do you keep asking that?"

"I almost killed you," Bucky says, still with almost no emotion in his voice. It’s unclear if he’s questioning Steve because he can’t seem to string a sentence together, or because it’s crazy to tell Bucky he’s still a hero after almost being murdered by him, but it doesn’t matter. Bucky needs to know it doesn’t matter.

"You _ didn’t, _ though," Steve says firmly. "And you’re… here."

Bucky nods, still with his arms wrapped around himself. The cuffs of his sweater are ratty and a little too long.

"I assume not to kill me," Steve adds, since Sam and Natasha would probably think he should check on that.

"No," Bucky says. "I wanted to talk to you. I didn’t mean to…" He nods down at the bed, at the rumpled covers around him. 

"That’s okay! I’m glad you got some rest. You look… like you need it."

"You look like shit too."

"Wow." Steve feels his eyebrows go up, his lips twitching up a little, too. Was that a joke? It’s really hard to tell if Soldier Bucky is making jokes or if he’s just that blunt, but Steve likes it either way. He likes it a whole lot more when he catches the little tick at the corner of Bucky’s lips. "Should we um… should we both rest a little then? And we can talk in the morning?"

"Okay," Bucky agrees, starting to pull the blanket aside. "I can—"

"No, no, you’re fine. I’ll sleep on the couch."

"Okay," Bucky says again. Like with everything else he says, Steve has no idea how he means it. Is this actually what he wants? Does he know how to say he _ doesn’t _want something, after so many decades of not being allowed to?

"Or we can talk now?" Steve offers. "What do you want to do?"

Bucky watches him for a long moment, with something uncomfortably close to fear in his eyes, then looks away, pulling at his sleeves so they come down over his hands and he can worry the ends with his fingers. Steve can hear the quick puffs of his breath, sitting as close as he is, and instantly feels like an idiot all over again.

"Hey, Buck?"

"I don’t know," Bucky says, so low Steve barely catches it. His eyes are on the floor somewhere to Steve’s left. His hands trembling like they had in Austria.

"That’s okay, let’s just sleep now. We’ll figure it out in the morning."

Bucky nods, his shoulders relaxing a little.

"Are you warm enough?"

Bucky nods again, but Steve doesn’t know if that really means anything. Steve doesn’t really _ know anything, _ and it feels like shit. He’s supposed to be able to fix things and help people, that’s what he _ does. _But he let Bucky fall from that train, and he didn’t go after him, and now he doesn’t know how to talk to him. Doesn’t even know if he’s really warm or not, so what the hell kind of best friend is he?

"Here," he says, wincing at the way his voice comes out too high from nerves and helplessness. He opens up his closet and pulls out an extra blanket, thick and woolen, and sets it at the foot of the bed. "Just in case?"

Bucky nods, says _ thank you _ in that voice that’s almost too soft to catch, and pulls it towards himself. 

"Okay," Steve says. "Well, g’night then."

"Goodnight."

Steve stands there like an absolute moron for several long beats, because he’s scared to death to walk away and have Bucky disappear out a window before the morning, but he forces a stiff smile and leaves the room.

He forgot to get pajamas for himself. Or a blanket. Or a pillow.

He stretches out on the couch with his arms under his head and knows that it doesn’t matter; there’s not going to be any sleeping anyway. There will just be a long, quiet wait until the morning comes and he gets to see Bucky again. 

It’s less than an hour later that he hears Bucky snoring. The same intermittent, soft rumble that’s still as familiar as the lullabies his mother sang him as a boy.

So, not that quiet then. For the first time since nineteen goddamn forty-five, Steve feels a little bit at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A HUGE THANK YOU to my squad of angel-gremlins—Essie, Val, and RC—for reading over this for me, and being so supportive of my swan dive into stucky fandom. And to Essie again, for the beautiful twitter graphics ♥
> 
> And thanks for reading! You can find my other stucky fics [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&include_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=110293&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&user_id=Ellessey), and can find me continually singing their praises (and Sebastian Stan's) on twitter at [elliebbarnes](https://twitter.com/elliebbarnes).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's kind of a dumb name," the soldier says, which makes Steve smile.
> 
> "I don't think so, but you could use James instead."
> 
> The soldier doesn't want to use James. James is nothing to him. At least he has memories now of being called Bucky, even if they're very new. And maybe it would help—with remembering that he's a person, and decisions are his to make, and he's not going to be punished for making them—if he thought of himself as someone with a real name. One that comes naturally to Steve's lips and makes him smile.
> 
> "No," he says. "Not James. I'd rather be Bucky."

The soldier did not mean to fall asleep in Steve Rogers' bed, the first time or the second time. When he'd located the apartment, Steve wasn't there, so the soldier had found his way inside and sat down to wait. 

That had gotten boring pretty quickly, and then even exploring had been boring because there was nothing _ there. _Just some novels the soldier felt too tired to read, and some sketchbooks that held too many drawings of his face, the way it looked when he was still Steve Rogers' friend.

By the end of the day he'd drifted back into the bedroom and thought he might as well be comfortable, as long as Rogers was going to take forever to get his ass back home. He wasn't going to _ sleep, _but he was cold, the bed was warm, and it didn't smell like anything familiar but it did smell nice. 

And then Steve Rogers returned. His eyes were big and blue, and the soldier didn't remember them. His voice was careful and deep and warm, and the soldier didn't remember that either. 

He'd curled back up after Steve left him alone, planning only to contemplate how infuriating it was to feel like he'd jumped off a cliff every time he was faced with a minor decision—stomach flipping and heart rate flying—but the bed was still warm and nice smelling, and he'd fallen back asleep instead. 

In the morning he wraps the woolen blanket around his shoulders and shuffles out of the bedroom, hoping maybe he can be the one to catch Steve Rogers asleep this time.

"Morning," Steve says, as soon as the soldier steps into the living room. He's sitting up on the couch with a mug of coffee in his hands. "You sleep okay?" he asks, when the soldier doesn't respond. 

"Yeah." 

He is bad at this. At being in a room with someone who isn't in charge of him, or about to be killed by him. 

"Do you, uh... are you hungry? I can make some oatmeal, or pancakes, or—"

The soldier grips the blanket a little tighter. Why does this guy have to ask so many questions? Why does he care so much what the soldier wants? It doesn't matter. He doesn't matter, outside of getting the job done. And he's not even doing that now.

"Or um, God, I'm sorry Buck, you don't like that do you? Want me to just make something?"

The soldier nods, sitting down on the far end of the couch as Steve gets off of it. It's great and all, that he can eat whatever he wants and do whatever he wants, but it makes him feel weird and he just needs to... take his time, maybe. He's already made a lot of choices. He's here. He's not killing Steve. 

"I'm not a great cook," Steve says from the kitchen, which is separated from the living room only by a long counter. "But I'm pretty good at not burning things anymore, mostly."

"Yum," the soldier says, and Steve looks up at him from the carton of eggs in his hands with a surprised little smile. 

"Just be glad this isn't two years ago. When I first came out of the ice, the only skills I had were from living with you. I know you don't remember, but we were hopeless. Couldn't put one proper meal together between the two of us."

"We lived together?" the soldier asks. That wasn't included in the history lesson at the museum. 

"Oh, uh, yeah. After my mom died, you moved out of your folks' place and we shared a little apartment. Lived there until you got your orders."

"Oh," the soldier says. So they really were inseparable. It would be nice to remember that, and to remember that he couldn't cook, and that Steve liked him enough that he wanted to be around him all the time, eating subpar food. He gets off the couch and sits on one of the stools set at the counter instead, so he can watch Steve cook badly. "There's eggshell in there."

"Shit." Steve carefully fishes it out, casting a sheepish glance over at the soldier. "Hey, can you stir this for me while I work on the other stuff?"

"We could eat cereal," the soldier says, but he gets to his feet again. "You don't have to do all this."

"I know, I just—here, wait, you're gonna get that in the eggs," Steve says, grabbing the blanket before it slips off the soldier's back. "I can turn up the heat if you're cold."

The soldier likes the blanket. It's thick and knobbly, and it makes him feel like he's kind of in his own space, even though he's also in Steve's. 

"I'm fine," he says, readjusting so he can hold the blanket in place with one hand, and stir the scrambled eggs with the other. 

"Okay," Steve says, but he still seems concerned.

If he's worried about the blanket he doesn't need to be. The soldier has it with his left hand, the one that's not a real hand, and his grip there never fails. 

"If I burn the pancakes we can have cereal, but I just want to give you... let's just have a nice breakfast, okay Buck?"

The soldier nods, even though Steve Rogers clearly isn't saying what he actually wants to say, and his cheeks are pink even though it's not that warm in here.

"Hey, is it alright that I'm calling you that?"

The soldier shrugs, focusing on turning the eggs over so they cook evenly.

"I don't have to, if you'd prefer something else? I mean, what do you think of yourself as?"

That's too many questions again, and the soldier doesn't have any good answers. It feels too stupid to say he just thinks of himself as _ soldier; _ that's not even a name. But what else is there? He's just an asset, a ghost. Or maybe he isn't those things now, but he's not James Buchanan Barnes anymore either. 

"I don't know," the soldier says. "Nothing. It doesn't matter. Bucky is fine."

"You think of yourself as... nothing?"

"You need to flip those."

Steve blinks at him, confused, then finally looks down at the pancakes he's inexpertly making. The soldier has no memory of cooking, and apparently he sucked before he stopped having memories anyway, but even he knows that if you put something on a hot surface and _ leave it there, _it's gonna burn. 

"Oh! Shit, sorry. I really am better at this, I'm just... a little distracted."

The soldier removes his pan from the stove so the eggs don't burn, and takes a step back. He didn't answer Steve's question, and he doesn't want to.

"So, uh..." Steve fumbles a little, getting the last of the pancakes flipped. "Are you okay with thinking of yourself as Bucky, then?"

"It's kind of a dumb name," the soldier says, which makes Steve smile.

"I don't think so, but you could use James instead."

The soldier doesn't want to use James. James is nothing to him. At least he has memories now of being called Bucky, even if they're very new. And maybe it would help—with remembering that he's a person, and decisions are his to make, and he's not going to be punished for making them—if he thought of himself as someone with a real name. One that comes naturally to Steve's lips and makes him smile.

"No," he says. "Not James. I'd rather be Bucky."

Being Bucky is what woke him up. 

_ Bucky, you've known me your whole life. _

He hasn't, because a whole lot of that life hasn't been his. But he knew him before, and he kind of knows him now. And he likes being in this bright kitchen with pancakes sizzling and the smell of eggs, and Steve looking at him now like he just took the sun in his hands and put it up in the sky. 

"Okay," Steve says. "You want some bacon?"

Yes, yes he does. That's an easy one. 

They eat breakfast quietly, side by side on the counter stools. There is no dining table. Maybe Steve doesn't do a lot of dining. His pancakes are tasteless and too solid, so that’s probably for the best.

"Taste okay?" Steve asks.

The soldier, _ Bucky, _grunts in some kind of affirmation. He appreciates them even if they're not very good. 

They clean up together after. The soldier (who is maybe not a soldier anymore and is actually called Bucky, but God, this is weird) drying everything after Steve washes it, then setting them in the drainer next to the sink.

"Still cold?" Steve asks when they're finished, nodding towards the blanket.

The soldier shrugs. Or Bucky does, whatever. He's always cold, even when he's not actually cold on the outside. 

"Can I, uh… would it be okay if I gave you a hug?" Steve asks.

"Why?"

"Why? Because... I don't know, because you look like you could use one. And I definitely could."

It's hard to put himself inside Steve's head, but Bucky supposes it must be difficult seeing your dead best friend being not actually dead, and having him not remember a thing about you. Losing nearly seventy years to being asleep in the ice was probably hard, too. At least the waking up in the future part.

"Okay," he says, though he's not completely sure he's okay with it. He's never been hugged. He reminds himself several times as Steve steps closer that this is not an enemy or a target approaching him. Not someone trying to hurt, or needing to be hurt.

"Okay?" Steve asks again when he's right in front of Bucky, hands held up in front of him. 

Bucky nods, and Steve wraps his arms around him slowly. Keeping a space between their bodies at first, and then pressing in close so they're chest to chest, Steve's face pushing into Bucky's shoulder. It's the one that's mostly metal, but he doesn't seem to care. He doesn't seem to care that he's soon crying into it either, back shuddering under Bucky's hands when he finally lifts them to hold Steve.

He doesn't remember doing this before. He doesn't remember the feel of Steve's arms, or the smell of his hair, or the muffled sounds of his crying.

There are tears on Bucky's cheeks too, though. There's a fire in his chest and all through his limbs like breaking glass that isn't cutting him. There's a sunburst of images and feelings that are all too quick to really tell anything from, other than that Steve and the museum weren't lying. There's safety and certainty and something that aches, something Bucky doesn't have a name for. A defiant frown on a small, blue eyed face. Long, grey-smudged fingers with a stick of charcoal tucked between them. A metal fire escape, and a sky full of stars, and the only person who matters beside him.

They stand there for much longer than he thinks hugs normally last. The blanket has fallen to the floor, but Steve is warmer, and there aren't any rules here. Just the lingering smell of a good breakfast, and Steve with his hand curled in the back of Bucky's sweater, keeping it there when he finally leans back enough for them to look at each other. 

"Sorry, sorry. I've just really missed you."

Bucky doesn't know how to respond to this. He still isn't here, not the Bucky Steve's been missing. Not most of him anyway. Maybe a little bit of him, but is that enough?

"I…"

"Are you alright?" Steve asks, noticing Bucky's tears now and letting go of him like he thinks he did something wrong. "_Sorry, _ I shouldn't have—"

Bucky shakes his head. "It was... okay."

"Yeah?"

"I think... you're in there. Somewhere. Maybe more of your Bucky is, too."

"_Oh," _Steve says. "Did you remember something?"

"Not—sort of. I don't know how to…"

"Was it… not with your head again?"

It was a little with his head this time, but mostly it was with everything else. It seems silly to say it was with his heart, more than anything, but his chest is definitely still warm with it and he rests his hand there now, wanting to keep it close.

"I’m not going to be _ him, _ though, even if…"

"I know," Steve says, stooping to pick the blanket up, then holding it out with eyebrows raised in a question. Wrapping it back around Bucky when he nods. "That’s okay. I’d like to… I’d really like to know _ you." _

"Replacement Bucky."

"No." Steve frowns. It’s like in the flash in Bucky’s head. Bigger face, just as stubborn. "Just the Bucky you are now. Would that be okay?"

"You ask too many questions."

"I can try not to."

"Can you?" Bucky asks, and Steve smiles again, in that surprised way that feels like some kind of achievement. Except Bucky isn’t trying to be funny, so he’s not sure if it counts.

"Maybe. It’s okay if you tell me to shut up when you need me to."

"Okay."

"And you can ask questions, too, if you want. You said you wanted to talk to me, right?"

"I am talking to you."

"Right," Steve says, smiling again. "Why don’t you take a shower while I get a couple things done. I just need to make a few phone calls."

"Don’t tell them I’m here."

"Who?"

"Your avenging friends. The ones who are looking for me."

"Oh, uh… Buck, they _ are _ my friends. They’re good people. They won’t—"

"_No," _ Bucky says, which makes his body go cold and his heart rate spike, because he’s _ not _ allowed to say that, but he can’t, he can’t risk being taken in by anyone. HYDRA or otherwise. He’ll either have to be a weapon again or be punished for being a weapon, and maybe he should be but he isn’t ready for that yet. He wants to remember more stars and more feelings that aren’t fear and anger. He wants to keep making Steve Rogers smile.

"Okay, okay, Bucky of course, I promise," Steve says, and he’s much too tall now because Bucky is sitting on the floor. "I won’t tell anyone. It’s just you and me, okay? It’s just you and me."

Steve gets on the floor with him, with his arm around Bucky’s shoulders, patting him and repeating himself and sounding far away. 

"I won’t let anyone hurt you, I swear to God."

It’s a stupid thing to say to someone who has hurt as many people as Bucky has. He’s deadly, practically invincible. He could tear HYDRA to pieces if they didn’t know just what to say to make his mind go blank. To fill it up with only their words. 

Steve’s words get inside his head too, but Bucky doesn’t mind them there. They made him free, up on that carrier. They used to be part of him before, when he knew how to smile like the pictures in Steve’s sketchbook, so maybe they’re as much his as they are Steve’s anyway.

"What does it mean. Till the end of the line."

"Huh?" Steve says, leaning in like he didn’t quite hear Bucky, but then seeming to put it together. "Oh, it means what I’ve been saying. What you used to say to me. That you’d always be there, for everything."

"I wasn’t."

"Well… neither was I. But second chances, right? We’re not at the end of the line yet."

They should be. They should both be dead right now, so it’s some kind of goddamn miracle that they’re sitting here with the chance to do it again. To make good on promises that Bucky doesn’t remember making in the first place. Or, his head doesn’t. Some part of him must, because his face is wet again, and there’s a new, softer version of the glass shattering feeling happening, but maybe that’s just from leaning into Steve. 

There’s too much to sort out here, but in every blurry thing he can remember from being the soldier, he knows he always, always just wanted to be _ gone. _

And right now, he wants to be here. 

* * *

Steve and Bucky don’t talk much for the next while, which is probably good since Steve seems to be great at saying the wrong thing. Or too many things. Too many _ questions, _ specifically, but God he has so many of them, and he doesn’t know how else to figure out what Bucky needs and wants.

They’d sat on the kitchen floor for a long time after Bucky had quickly and quietly had some kind of shutdown that made him shaky and reluctant to meet Steve’s eyes. He’d let Steve hold him though, leaning into Steve’s side and just _ staying there_. By choice. Steve’s sure, because he asked Bucky several times if he wanted to be alone, and eventually Bucky told him to shut up and aggressively shoved his head under Steve’s chin, which was… probably the best thing he’s experienced since waking up in the wrong century. 

He doesn’t want this to be so hard for Bucky. He doesn’t want him to be scared or confused or lost, but he does want to be there for him. Finally, after all the things he should have been able to save him from, he can at least be here for this. 

After Bucky showers (and Steve doesn’t talk to anyone, because he’s 90% sure anything he tries to say that isn’t the truth will arouse suspicion in Natasha), he comes back out wearing Steve’s clothes. Sweats that are a little too long, and a long sleeved shirt that fits him well. Really well. Steve feels his face go hot and immediately looks away and comments on the weather, because he’s an idiot as well as a terrible person. 

He keeps sneaking glances though, when they’re side by side on the couch later, both pretending to actually be reading. There’s just something about seeing Bucky in his clothes. Steve used to wear Bucky’s things all the time. Didn’t really even think about it, just grabbed whatever was there if he wasn’t going out (which he often wasn’t, since he was always getting over one thing or coming down with another) and put it on. If it was Bucky’s that was fine, it would just be too big. Comfy. Laced with the familiar smell of pomade and peppermint. 

Bucky's hair is so different now. Past his chin even where it's shortest, soft and wavy after being washed. He tucks it behind his ear with the metal hand that whirrs quietly as it moves. Steve wants to ask at least twenty questions about it—about how much it hurt then and if it hurts now—but he’s trying to give Bucky some peace.

"Why do you keep looking at me."

There’s no inflection, but Steve decides to treat it as a question anyway.

"You’re here," he says. 

Bucky looks over at him with something that could possibly be the ghost of a smile in one corner of his lips. "Yeah," he agrees, then both corners turn down. "I can’t stay here forever though."

"Why not?"

"HYDRA. SHIELD. I need to go somewhere... safe."

"We can make you safe here, Bucky. We—hey," Steve says, resting a hand on Bucky’s wrist when he sees his fist clenching. "Not until you’re ready. I won’t do anything unless you say it’s okay. But there are a few people I’d trust with my life, and with yours. When you’re ready to talk to them we can figure this out. And if you still want to go after that, then… I’d go with you."

Bucky’s eyebrows draw together, and his fingers stretch out and curl up again with a low metallic hum. "You can’t know you want to do that. You don’t know me."

"Maybe if you’d let me ask you questions…"

Bucky exhales softly. A quiet, New Bucky version of a laugh. He used to be so boisterous, used to almost never stop talking, actually. But this isn’t bad, the way he is now. Just different.

"It’s... hard," Bucky says slowly, looking away from Steve. "It makes me feel sick, when you want me to decide something."

That makes Steve feel sick too, and he doesn’t know what to say so he just keeps holding Bucky’s metal wrist. He wonders if Bucky can even feel him.

"I think I just have to get used to it. To it being okay for me to... do things I want, and not get, you know…"

Steve can imagine. But he’s sure he doesn’t know the half of it. 

"I don’t want to make it harder," Steve says. "I just really don’t want to tell you what to do either. I can’t—I can’t do that to you."

There’s no clear cut solution to this, so they just sit there a while longer. Bucky biting at his lip, and Steve stroking the metal wrist under his thumb. Eventually it seems late enough to put another meal together, and then there’s more sitting. More of Steve looking at Bucky out of the corner of his eye, and Bucky ignoring this until he reaches his limit and uses one of the couch pillows to hit Steve in the face. 

"What’s wrong with you?" he asks, when Steve just blinks at him in shock.

_ I can’t stop looking at you. Your face is my favorite thing. I’m scared if I blink you’ll be gone. _

"You know," he says instead, "it used to be the other way around."

Bucky looks at him quizzically, shifting so he can lean back against the arm of the couch and face Steve.

"You were always bugging me, when I was trying to draw or read or whatever. You always wanted to be doing something, wanted to go out. You’d just sit there and _ stare _ at me until you got some attention."

"Do _ you _ need attention, Steve?" Bucky asks.

Steve stops breathing briefly, because this is the first time Bucky has said his name, and what a phrase for it to go along with. "I'm just saying," he says. "You were worse than me." 

"Hm. It sounds like I was kind of annoying."

"Oh, very, yeah. But I was too, to be honest."

"How?"

Steve smiles, leaning back against the other side of the couch. He tells Bucky about all the fights he used to have to get Steve out of. All the times Steve was so goddamn sure he was right (because he _ was _ right) and there was nothing that could stop him from punching out all the wrongs he could get his hands on. He tells him about sketching him all the time, until Bucky had threatened to strip down if Steve wanted a model so badly, and Steve had literally choked on a potato chip. Bucky had laughed so hard he’d cried, after Steve was breathing fine again. 

Bucky of the present has a hint of a smile on his lips now, listening to Steve recount the tale. 

"Why'd you draw me so much?" he asks.

Steve shrugs, fiddling with the hem of his t-shirt. "I mean, you were there. But I also just liked to. You were so expressive, with your face, your hands. I liked trying to capture it, all your moods."

"You can draw me looking confused now."

God it would be nice if Steve knew if that was a joke, but it's way too hard to tell with Bucky's deadpan voice. He settles on letting himself smile, and Bucky doesn't smile back, but his eyes do something warm so it seems okay.

"I'd love to draw you again, if you ever feel up to it." 

"Not again," Bucky says, which doesn't make any sense for a long minute, until it does. He's not the same Bucky now, but Steve could draw this Bucky for the first time. 

"Right. Yeah. I'd love to draw _ you," _ Steve corrects, hoping the distinction is clear.

"Maybe."

"Okay," Steve says, trying to sound like a calm, grown ass man. He's pretty sure his voice comes out more like ten year old Steve, when his new friend with the big, stormy blue eyes and bold smile first said, "Sure you can draw me. Make me look real good, like in the magazines."

He already looked like that, not that Steve was capable of actually putting it down on paper at that point. He still does, too. All the boyish softness is gone now, but in its place is a strong, wide jaw. Straight full brows, and soft full lips. A perfect nose that's always been smaller than Steve's, even when Steve was smaller than everyone. 

"Then you can stare at me to your heart's content," Bucky says dryly. He says everything dryly, but this seems particularly intentional. 

Steve clears his throat, rather than try to reply to that. It's bad enough that he can't stop staring at his best friend, he can at least try to be more discreet about it. It's not like the staring is new, so he must have been better at hiding it before.

"I'm gonna make dinner," he says, getting to his feet. "If you want to help…" He trails off, because it doesn’t seem like there's any happy medium between asking Bucky what he wants and just telling him how it's going to go. They still need to figure this out.

"Seems like I'd better."

"I feel like that's probably an insult," Steve says, narrowing his eyes.

Bucky raises his eyebrows at him as he gets to his feet, and Steve is positive this time that there’s the tiniest smile on Bucky’s lips as he walks past into the kitchen.

They make sandwiches for dinner, because that’s about all they have, and all they can do. They taste amazing though, layered with sliced turkey, cheese, and lettuce. Eaten next to each other on Steve’s couch, with their plates on their laps. 

"Want another?" Steve asks. It’s a question, but it feels like a safe one. Bucky’s appetite seems to be just as endless as his own.

Bucky nods. "If that’s alright."

"Of course. Any time you want something here just take it, okay? If there’s something you want that we don’t have—"

"You don’t have to spoil me."

He _ does, _ though. Or maybe he doesn’t have to, but he wants to. He’s always wanted to give Bucky the world, but all he had was himself before. 

"You always did it for me. I mean as much as you could."

They were dirt poor, both of them, but Steve knows how many times Bucky spent the little he could scrounge up on Steve. Sometimes for things he needed: medicine, bread, socks that hadn't been patched up five times already. But Bucky was always the most pleased with himself when he was able to show up with a bar of chocolate, with a used paperback not missing any pages. Or the very best things—art supplies that Steve knew cost so much it made his chest ache just to hold them. 

He tells Bucky about all of that, about how Bucky would scold Steve for trying to make the new paints or pencils last instead of just enjoying them. 

"So just let me get some goddamn groceries for you, okay Buck?" he finishes.

"Okay," Bucky says. "Bossy."

Steve lets out a weird sound that was meant to be a laugh, but winds up sounding pained.

"What?"

"Nothing," Steve says. "Sorry, it’s nothing, you just… you always called me that."

"Seems like it didn’t make a difference," Bucky points out, in that _ tone _ of his that’s so even, it’s almost easy to miss that he’s definitely being a shit.

"Guess not," Steve says with a grin. "Guess you’re stuck with me being this way."

Bucky looks at him appraisingly, as if he’s really trying to determine if that’s acceptable or not, and Steve starts to sweat. It’s a lot to assume that Bucky’s really going to stay close to Steve, no matter how much Steve wants him to.

Finally Bucky shrugs and leans back against the couch, settling in. "Guess I am."

Steve doesn’t say anything. He really wants to hug Bucky again, but he doesn’t want to overwhelm him, so he just stands there holding their empty plates and quietly imploding. 

"Do you... need help?" Bucky asks, tipping his chin up in the direction of the kitchen.

"No, nope, I got it."

"Okay," Bucky says. His favorite word. Or maybe the one he feels safest saying, which makes Steve want to knock it right out of his vocabulary. He wants him to know there’s nothing he can’t say here. 

He puts an exorbitant amount of everything on Bucky's sandwich, and is stupidly pleased when Bucky eats the whole thing. 

"You're better at things that don't actually require cooking."

"Thanks," Steve says, even though he knows it's barely a compliment.

Bucky nods back to him, like maybe he thinks it was. Or maybe the slight crinkling next to his eyes means he knows it wasn't. 

It used to be so easy to read Bucky, but if this is the way it is now—little tells and clues for Steve to find—that's really okay. Steve is great with making it his mission to study the face of the new Bucky Barnes. 

* * *

Bucky has had a very long day. He’s spent half of it trying to decide if he wants to ask Steve to hug him again or not. It was good, getting that flash of _ something, _ from before, but it also left him feeling overfilled and wiped out. It’s not even nine o’clock and he feels ready to crash. The mental gymnastics of all of this—reminding himself who he is and who he isn’t, not freaking out when he has to decide between mayo and mustard, wondering what the hell is going on in Steve’s head every time Bucky catches his eyes on him—feel like the equivalent of a multi-day, action-packed mission. 

In the end he decides it would be too much, touching Steve again. He’s already overloaded by all the things Steve has told him. All the stories about back alley fights, summer nights, and a Bucky who sounds more selfless than this Bucky can ever imagine himself being.

He supposes since it was for Steve though, maybe he can see how he managed. 

"I’m ready to sleep," he says, when Steve comes out of the bathroom.

"Okay, sure." Steve looks surprised, but doesn’t point out how early it is. Maybe he’s tired out from having Bucky here too. "I’m fine with you taking my room again. I’m good on the couch."

He says that all very casually, but Bucky catches the careful way he speaks, the way he’s bracing himself just slightly. Trying to find the right way to talk to Bucky without setting him off or shutting him down. It’s… sweet. And pretty well done. He hasn’t actually asked Bucky a question or given him a direction.

"Thanks," Bucky says. He feels a little guilty relegating Steve and his oversized body to the couch, but he really likes the bed. He loves the smell of it and the perfect firmness of it. Not too hard, not too soft. "Steve…"

"Yeah?"

He really just wants to say thank you again, but that seems silly. It’s not just the bed, though, or the patience and the food and the stories, it’s... Bucky doesn’t know. Maybe it’s just Steve. Maybe that’s why they were inseparable, and why here they are again, after everything. 

"Nothing," he says out loud, because that’s all too much to find the right words for. "Goodnight."

"Night, Buck."

Bucky shuts the door tight and gets into bed, then immediately gets back up again, opening the door to find Steve right there. One hand raised to knock, and the other holding the blanket. The good one.

Steve smiles and hands it over. "You know, I made this myself," he says. "I didn’t know what to do with myself sometimes, when I first woke up, and this gave me something to keep my hands busy."

"How’d you know how to knit?"

"A couple of the girls taught me, the USO girls. When I was, you know, doing the thing. With the tights."

Bucky blinks at him. He does not know what the thing with the tights is, but he definitely needs to. 

He finds out when Steve comes and sits on the bed with him, blushing while he talks about the shows he used to put on to sell war bonds. The Star Spangled Man with a Plan, they called him. There was a song and everything. 

"Do you still have the outfit?" 

Steve laughs, looking at Bucky speculatively. "You and that outfit. You asked if I was gonna keep it, back then."

"Well, did you?"

"Sorry, pal. The museum has it. They’ve got a bunch of my old stuff put away somewhere."

"Too bad," Bucky says, which makes Steve’s cheeks go pink again, and makes Bucky’s head spin some more. 

"Well... at least this came out of it." Steve pokes at the blanket spread over Bucky’s legs. "It’s terrible, but I’m glad you like it."

It’s not terrible. Uneven and lumpy, maybe, but it’s sturdy and soft too. 

"It’s a good blanket," Bucky says.

"Thanks, Buck."

"I want to sleep now."

"Oh, right. Sorry. You’re supposed to tell me when I talk too much."

"You didn’t."

Steve smiles again. It would be nice to know if that’s just what he does, or if Bucky is good at making it happen. It would be nice to know so many things that he doesn’t, but not tonight. He doesn’t have room for anything else. Especially not now that he knows about the tights. 

He falls asleep in minutes, with the good blanket wrapped right around his shoulders where it seems to fit best. 

He wakes with his whole body soaked and his throat on fire. Everything’s too close and too dark, and there are hands on him that he almost breaks before his vision clears enough to see the worried man hovering over him. 

"Bucky, Buck, you’re okay. It’s me, it’s Steve. Can you hear me?"

The soldier shakes his head. He hears the words but he... he’s not in the right place, he’s not supposed to be here, he doesn’t know who Steve is, or—

"You’re okay, you’re okay," the man says, touching the soldier again gently. "Bucky, it’s me. It’s just you and me, remember?"

The soldier closes his eyes and just tries to breathe, tries to think of why _ it’s just you and me _means something to him. He lets the man whisper to him and stroke his hair, and he doesn’t remember for so long, but then, somewhere around when his heart rate evens out, he does. This is Steve. Steve who makes bad pancakes and perfect blankets. This is Steve’s bed, where the soldier fell asleep while the sky still had a little light in it, and knew that he had been Bucky before and could be another Bucky now.

Not the soldier. Not the man with the white star. They are Bucky and Steve. The museum says they always have been.

"Steve," he says, and then winces. His throat is raw. That’s a feeling he remembers.

"Yeah, I’m here, Buck. I’m here."

"What…"

Steve shifts next to him, sitting up so they can face each other better. "You had a nightmare. You were screaming and I didn’t… maybe I made it worse. I didn’t know what to do."

"Did I hurt you?" Bucky asks. He doesn’t remember yelling, or Steve coming in, so what else did he miss when Steve was trying to help him?

"No, no, I’m fine. Are _ you _ okay? What were you... you don’t have to tell me, nevermind."

Bucky couldn’t tell him if he tried. He remembers it only in brief, jumbled, violent glimpses. The smell of piss and fear. The sound of a saw far, far too close to him. The sky above him, and something else, someone else, getting smaller and smaller, so fast. Getting farther away while Bucky screamed and screamed. 

"How did I… die?" he asks in a whisper. He knows he didn’t really, but he also knows everyone thought he did for a reason.

Steve swallows. "You... we were on a train, looking for Arnim Zola. He’s the one who…"

Bucky nods. He remembers Zola, from after, and Steve told him about finding Bucky in his lab before.

"You fell out. You fell out and I almost had you, Buck, but I couldn’t reach."

A cold metal bar, always slipping out of his fingers. Not just a recurring nightmare, then. Great that that stuck around in his brain, but none of the good things did.

"You fell so, so far, there was no way you—I didn’t know. I didn’t know what Zola had done to you. That you could survive." 

Steve’s crying again. Tears on his cheeks and little hiccups interrupting his speech. He thinks it’s his fault. The star spangled man with a plan thinks he should have been prepared for Bucky not dying, when he shouldn't have been able to avoid it.

"Your face," Steve chokes out, "when you were falling..."

"I didn’t want to leave you," Bucky says, the words just coming out of nowhere. Coming out of that part inside him that’s allowed to talk when Steve is there, hand resting on the inside of Bucky’s wrist.

"Buck…"

He hadn’t meant to make the crying worse, but he doesn’t mind that Steve leans into him, pressing tears into Bucky’s shoulder again. Steve doesn’t flinch when Bucky brushes his metal fingers over the back of his neck, carefully touching the soft, short hair at his nape. 

There’s something Bucky's been wanting to ask—since he saw that video of them, the one where they orbited each other like twin planets—and this seems like maybe the time for him to do that.

"Did I... love you?"

"Sure you did," Steve says with a sniffle. "We were best—"

"No, but did I—were we ever... did I _ love _ you."

Steve goes still under Bucky’s hand. "No, we weren’t... no. I don’t think you did."

"Oh," Bucky says. That doesn’t sound right. Why would he have used every penny he could to make Steve happy? Why does holding him like this feel like fireworks? Why does he even remember what— "Steve?"

"Yeah, Buck?"

"Did we see fireworks together? When we were... when you were smaller?"

"Yeah, lots of times. Every Fourth of July we’d find a new place to watch from. Fire escapes, and rooftops, and—"

"For your birthday," Bucky interrupts, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to see it again. That image he just got, like a flare behind his eyelids. "You wore blue, and I... I said the whole damn sky is celebrating for you, Stevie."

Steve doesn’t say anything for a long time after that, so long Bucky would think he’d fallen asleep, except his breath keeps hitching. 

"It was my eighteenth," he says eventually. Bucky can feel his breath on his neck, warm and moist. "We couldn’t afford to do anything, but you got me that shirt from a second-hand shop, said it made my eyes look like a movie star’s. Told me all the girls would finally take notice."

"They didn’t take notice before?" Bucky asks, because why the hell not? He’s hanging on to that new picture in his head so hard. Steve’s face upturned and painted red and blue and white, like the night sky already knew exactly how far he was going to go. 

"_No," _Steve says with a laugh. "They didn’t when I wore that shirt, either. No one ever noticed me but you, Buck."

Bucky frowns. This still doesn’t add up. "But then—"

"Hey, we should try to get back to sleep, huh?" Steve says, sitting up so his hair isn’t wound between Bucky’s fingers anymore. "I can stay in here, if you'd like."

Bucky wants him to answer his question again in a way that makes sense, but Steve doesn’t seem to want to. Maybe Bucky did love him, the way it seems like he did, and Steve didn’t want that. But if that’s the case then—

"Bucky?"

"Yeah, stay here," Bucky says. He doesn’t get it, but there’s no way he’s going to figure it out in the middle of the night, with the sweat of panic and nightmares that aren’t only nightmares still sticky all over him. "I need to clean up though."

"Oh," Steve says, like he’s somehow managed to miss what a mess Bucky is. "Sure, go ahead. I’ll change the sheets."

Bucky hopes the bed will still have the same nice smell when there are different sheets, and that they haven’t ruined the good blanket with his sweat and Steve’s snot.

When he comes out of the bathroom in more clean clothes borrowed from Steve’s drawers, the bed is covered with fresh gray sheets that smell just like the old ones. Steve is resting on top of them, arms crossed over his chest like he’s not so sure he should still be here now that Bucky isn’t losing it anymore. 

Bucky stretches out next to him, pulling the knitted blanket over himself, sweat and snot be damned. He's glad Steve is here, even if it's strange to not be alone. He was always alone, when it was dark. 

Now he has fireworks crackling in colorful bursts inside his head, and a tug deep in his chest that he doesn't know the meaning of, but it feels familiar.

It feels like maybe there's more he wants, too, but he doesn't want to be greedy. They're not touching now, but he has Steve right next to him, breathing deep and steady, and this is enough. This is more than enough for now. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky comes closer and pokes at the french toast sizzling on the stove. "What’s this?"
> 
> "Bread dipped in egg, basically."
> 
> "Is that good?"
> 
> "I mean, it should be. Mine may not be."
> 
> Bucky smiles. Just... as if it’s nothing. As if this isn’t the first time in this century that Steve has seen both corners of his lips turn up at the same time and make his face something a hundred times better than a sunrise. He doesn’t even seem to realize he’s doing it.

It’s nice to be a naturally early riser. Especially when Bucky is still asleep—one hand fisted in that blanket he likes so much, the other relaxed above his head—and Steve just gets to take it in. The slightly parted lips, the dimple in Bucky’s chin that Steve has spent almost his whole goddamn life wanting to touch with the tip of his finger. 

"Shit," Steve breathes, and makes himself look away. It’s a good thing Bucky only asked if he ever loved Steve, and not if Steve loved him, because Steve is a terrible liar. 

He watches the ceiling instead of Bucky for what feels like an eternity, until there’s movement beside him, and then a muffled moan as Bucky smashes his face into the pillow. He’s just a blanket covered lump and a mess of dark, tangled hair when Steve turns back to him.

"Morning," Steve says, smiling fondly at the lump. Bucky never was one for mornings.

"Mmnn."

"I’m going to start breakfast. I have coffee and tea."

There’s silence for a little while, and then Bucky turns his face and says, "Tea."

Steve tries not to feel too proud of himself as he gets out of bed and heads into the kitchen. It probably shouldn’t have been so hard anyway, to figure out that giving Bucky general information, and letting him decide if he wants to make a choice based on it or ignore it, might help. He lets himself feel very proud of Bucky though, for all the choices he’s making. 

He cooks every damn thing he can find for him, because he wants to give him something, and food always seems to be readily accepted. 

"That’s… holy shit, Steve."

Bucky is standing near the fridge, with his blanket on his shoulders, and a bemused expression on his sleepy face.

"I’m just…" Being ridiculous. Giving Bucky all of the options to take or leave, so he doesn’t have to ask for anything. "You don’t have to eat anything you don’t want."

Bucky comes closer and pokes at the french toast sizzling on the stove. "What’s this?"

"Bread dipped in egg, basically."

"Is that good?"

"I mean, it should be. Mine may not be."

Bucky smiles. Just... as if it’s nothing. As if this isn’t the first time in this century that Steve has seen both corners of his lips turn up at the same time and make his face something a hundred times better than a sunrise. He doesn’t even seem to realize he’s doing it.

"Guess we’ll see," he says, stepping past Steve to take over supervising the pan full of bacon and sausages. "We didn’t have these yesterday."

"I ran to the store, after you fell asleep last night. The first time."

"Oh," Bucky says, and the smile isn't there anymore. "You were gone?"

"Yeah, just for… shit, Bucky, sorry. I didn’t think."

How could he not have thought of how Bucky would have felt, if he’d woken up and Steve just wasn’t there? Or if the nightmare had happened earlier and Bucky had been left to scream alone, like he’s probably been doing for so many goddamn years. Steve would have lost his mind if he’d woken up to find Bucky gone, right after he’d finally gotten him back.

"It’s okay," Bucky says.

"No, it’s not, I should have waited. Or left a note, or—"

"It’s fine, I was sleeping anyway."

"But then you _ weren’t." _

"And you were there."

He was. And Bucky had brushed careful metal fingers through his hair, and remembered Steve’s eighteenth birthday, and asked him if they’d ever been in love. 

"Next time I won’t just leave though, okay? I wouldn’t want you to just leave."

He doesn’t ever want him to leave.

"Okay," Bucky says. "Good."

"Good," Steve agrees. 

"I really think you should flip that."

"_Fuck." _

The first batch of french toast is hopelessly burned and gets tossed in the trash. But the second batch earns a satisfied nod from Bucky, and the third is an experimental collaboration between the two of them, involving nutmeg and vanilla, that surprises them both with how well it turns out.

"Maybe we're better at this in our old age," Bucky says.

"Maybe," Steve laughs. What a bizarre world that's allowed them to both be here now, still looking like they're in their twenties when they should be hunched over canes, or not here at all. 

He immediately feels guilty for thinking that, for being so glad of Bucky's presence. He's only here now because he lived through all those years of hell.

"Think this'll be good?" Bucky asks.

Steve pulls himself out of his thoughts, and looks up to see Bucky wrapping a piece of bacon around a sausage.

"I think it'll give you heart disease."

"I don't think I can get that?"

That shouldn't be funny at all—Bucky should have a normal body that does normal things—but Steve doesn't have that either, and God it's so nice to not be alone. It's so fucking nice that when Steve laughs out loud Bucky beams at him before popping the whole ball of grease in his mouth.

"Is it good?" Steve asks while Bucky's mouth is still too full to answer him.

That doesn't stop him though. He wraps up another sausage and holds it out to Steve expectantly, practically shoving it in his face when Steve takes too long to grab hold of it.

"Okay, okay! God, we'd better eat some fruit after this."

That was kind of an order, but Steve doesn't feel badly about making it because Bucky seems to love fruit even more than the bacon/sausage combo. Steve thought the things he bought last night would last them the week, but they're almost out now, and completely stuffed by the time they collapse in the living room.

"I feel like such a glutton."

Bucky eyes him from across the couch. "No one made you cook everything in your kitchen."

"Well, we made some good discoveries because of it."

Bucky nods. "You're going to need to go to the store again."

"Do you want to come?"

Oops, that was a direct question. It's really hard not to ask those though. 

"No. I don't know. I shouldn't just be walking around."

Steve bites his tongue because Bucky's right, but they could also start trying to deal with this, if Bucky were okay with it. If they were in New York they'd have the Tower to go to, and half the team on hand at all times to watch out for Bucky. They could have someone look at him and see if there's anything they can do to help with everything that's already been done to him.

"Your friends are not going to want to help me," Bucky says, still managing to read Steve's mind even though that should be impossible at this point. "I tried to kill them. I ripped the bird man's wing off."

"Sam," Steve says, trying not to snicker. "They know why now though, Buck. They know it wasn't your fault."

"They know I'm still dangerous, too."

"To me? Do you think you're dangerous to me?"

Bucky's face is at its most impossible to read. "I don't know. Not here, no. But if they get to me? I'd lose all this, Steve. Everything I know now, they'd just wipe it away and send me after you again."

"And we'd work it out again."

"_Work it out? _ I was _ killing _you and you were letting me. I'm not fucking doing that again."

"I didn't mean—I just meant we'd deal with it if we had to, but that's not _ going _to happen again. I'm not letting anyone get to you."

Bucky makes a disbelieving sort of angry huff. "You think it's just that easy?"

Steve thinks he should probably just leave his foot in his mouth and not say anything else. Of _ course _ it isn't easy. Of course if it were Bucky wouldn't have been trapped all this time. Of course he has no reason to think Steve could keep him safe when he let him drop out of a goddamn train and left him for dead.

"I'm sorry, Bucky. No, I don't, I just… I promise I'll do everything in my power to help, okay?"

"Since that seems to include dying for me, no, that's not okay."

Steve lets out his own loud breath of frustration. Not at Bucky, just at… all of this. This mess that Bucky never should have been in, and that they shouldn't have to fight about now.

"I don't want either of us to die," he says finally. Because he certainly can't promise he wouldn't die for Bucky, but he doesn't want to have to. He wants to _ live _with him. "I also don't want you to have to hide forever. I don't want you to go somewhere without me."

"That's a lot of demands."

"Well, I'm demanding."

Bucky snorts softly. "You still don't actually know me, Steve. We've spent one day together. You shouldn't be tethered to me for the rest of your life when you could be—"

"What? Missing you all over again?"

"You wouldn't be missing _ me, _you'd be missing him."

"No, Buck, that's… it's not just one or the other. You still _ have _ parts of the old you. I know you can’t see it, but I can. And the parts that are new… I like those too. I'd miss those too."

"These parts?" Bucky asks darkly, lifting his metal arm.

"I mean, it's pretty badass, but I was thinking more like your sense of humor. And what an asshole you are."

"I wasn't an asshole before?"

"In a different way. Both good."

Bucky looks away, but Steve catches an almost smile on his lips, even if it quickly slips away again.

"You're so brave, too. I guess you always were, but that's what I mean. You're funny and brave and _ you _ in different ways now, but you're still… you're—Bucky I'll _ always _ want to know you. Always."

Steve waits and waits for Bucky to say something, but he keeps his head turned away. He keeps lacing his fingers through the loops of the blanket that might as well be permanently attached to him. 

"Buck…"

"I don’t want to talk anymore," Bucky says shortly. "I think I need a nap."

It's 11:00 in the morning, but Steve doesn't argue with this. He thinks he might need one too. 

"Okay," he says. "Go ahead and take my room. I won't go anywhere."

Bucky nods, still not meeting Steve's eye, and gets to his feet. He's sweated through his shirt, under the arms and around the collar, and his hands are trembling now that they’re not caught up in the blanket. Steve wants to punch himself in the face for at least the tenth time in the past thirty-six hours. That was way too much to throw at Bucky all at once. 

"Buck," he calls, before the bedroom door closes and separates them. Bucky turns around, just a dark curtain of hair and haunted eyes from across the apartment. "I'm sorry. I'll get better at this, I swear."

"You're fine, Steve. I'm just… I'm not."

He shuts the door then, before Steve can say anything, but at least this means he doesn't have to see Steve crying for the third time.

He _ knows _ Bucky's not fine, he knows he's not magically going to be able to fix that, but he feels his desire to like an impossible weight in the pit of his stomach. This miraculous super body of his doesn't make him any more capable of making things better for his best friend. The only person he's ever loved. _ Loved _ loved, like Bucky thought he might have loved Steve. Like Steve knew he never would, and knew that was okay, because at least he got to have Bucky in his life. He couldn't ask for more than that then, and he can't now, either. 

He presses his hands hard to his face, scrubs away the tears and the tiredness. Bucky is here, and he's trying, and Steve can pull himself the fuck together and try too.

The kitchen is a good distraction for a while. All the pans and spoons and bowls still need to be cleaned up. And then there are the texts from Natasha and Sam to deal with, which is… next to impossible. He tells Nat he's fine and just a little discouraged from striking out in Brooklyn. He tells Sam he can't get drinks tomorrow night because he's working on something, and then feels terrible for being vague and dishonest. He knows he can trust both of them, but he can't break Bucky's trust, so… 

_ I'm coming up dry too. I'm sorry Steve, _ Natasha says. _ I did tell you, if he doesn't want to be found he knows how to keep himself invisible. _

But they both know now that half the time he was "invisible" he was really just tucked away in a HYDRA base. Locked up. Frozen. Kept at the ready until they needed to send him out again. 

_ He's not really a ghost though, _ he texts back. _ Not any more than you are. _

_ I have, in fact, been an excellent ghost from time to time. _

Steve smiles, not surprised in the least that she couldn't resist pointing this out. He's pretty sure she'd still like to get another round with the Winter Soldier if she could, to prove how excellent she is at hand to hand too. He wishes he could tell her Bucky isn't a soldier or a ghost anymore. He's just a tired man who loves bacon and can't seem to keep warm. Even though Steve has had the heat jacked up since yesterday, and Bucky's never actually _ felt _cold when Steve has touched him. He wishes he could talk to Natasha about that too. 

_ I’d expect nothing less. Have a great day Nat. _

_ You too...don't drive yourself crazy. _

He will, of course, but he's been doing that his whole life. Always frustrated that his health kept him from doing all the things he wanted to. Frustrated again when he got this body and had to use it to punch a fake Hitler in the face instead of actually _ doing _something. And then so much more than frustrated when Bucky was gone and there was nothing Steve could do to bring him back.

Now he's on the other side of Steve's bedroom door, and he's scared and uncertain and Steve can't fix that either. So yes, he's feeling a little crazy with it all, but he's used to that. He'll work with it. He's antsy as all hell from doing so much sitting since he got back from Brooklyn, but he told Bucky he'd be here, and he will be. This is something he can do. 

He sits down on the couch with a sketchbook and tries to draw something other than Bucky's face while he waits. He wants to save that for when he gets to draw him from life again, instead of from memory.

Not _ again, _ not completely, Bucky was right about that. But it will be the same eyes, even if they've seen more now, even if they're lined in ways they didn't used to be. It's the same lips. Less likely to smile now, but just as beautiful when they do, and even when they don't. The same smooth, high forehead and broad cheekbones, the same face Steve fell in love with as a boy and never managed to stop. 

Steve thinks he was right too, that it isn't cut and dry. It isn't Old Bucky and New Bucky. Bucky is everything he's been before, grown and shifted and sometimes broken into the shape he is now. Not old or new, just _ him. _

And God help him, Steve already knows he loves him just like that. 

* * *

It seems like it should be impossible to sleep with so much rattling around in Bucky's head, but he burrows into Steve's bed with the good blanket and is out within minutes. When he wakes, the butter yellow light has darkened into the tail end of pink, and he knows he's slept the whole day away. 

Poor Steve, Bucky thinks. What has he been doing all day? What's he even thinking out there, after Bucky just up and left in the middle of a conversation? 

He hadn't wanted to do that, but he also didn't want to puke on Steve's living room rug, and things were starting to feel pretty dicey. Too much talk about Steve's friends, and the future, and how Steve's so certain that he'll always want to be around Bucky in it, as if it doesn't even matter that Bucky's spent the better part of a century being an actual monster. Or that he's just a funhouse mirror facsimile of the guy Steve cared so much about. Looks kind of the same, but everything's a little off. 

It’s like Steve said. He has part of his old self, and then these new parts too, and they don’t _ fit _together like Steve seems to think they do. He’s Frankenstein’s monster, pieced together and adrift in a world he doesn’t belong in. 

Except... Steve’s in this world, too. And Bucky’s not adrift anymore, he’s here in Steve’s room, with a blanket wrapped around him that Steve made with his own hands, when he was lonely and adrift too.

Bucky pulls the blanket over his head and lies back down. This is all very hard. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if it’s right to let Steve be so devoted to a mixed up version of the boy who once bought Steve paints he couldn’t afford, and looked at him under a sky full of lights like he was the brightest thing in the world. He can’t go back to that. He can’t be good like that again, not with all the blood he has on his hands. All the bad that’s stacked up in him for so long now. 

Steve says it wasn’t his fault, but he still did it, so doesn’t it amount to the same thing on some universal ledger? He doesn’t know how it works. 

He also doesn’t know how he can be so hungry after everything he ate this morning. He’s been hungry for as long as he can remember, but he always assumed that was because he was only ever given the bare minimum by his handlers. He didn’t realize how much his body could actually take in and burn through if given the chance. 

He has the chance now. He takes the blanket with him, because Steve hasn’t made fun of him for it yet, and he feels better this way.

"Hey," he says, stepping out into the short hallway, with a clear view of Steve on the couch.

"Hey!" Steve jumps to his feet, knocking a notebook off his lap without even noticing. "Did you just wake up? You feeling okay?"

"Yeah, just hungry. I can find something though."

"Maybe not. We may have eaten everything."

Bucky appreciates the small joke. Things could be awkward now, with the way they left off earlier, and Bucky hiding out for most of the day, even if it was unintentional. He’s glad they don’t have to try to pick up in the same place. He manages a small smile for Steve, and Steve smiles gratefully back.

"I was actually thinking of just ordering some pizza. That sound okay?"

"Sure."

"Would you... _ sorry, _ just, would you prefer something else? I didn’t really give you any other options there."

"No, pizza sounds good."

"Me not cooking probably sounds good too."

Bucky shrugs. The pancakes hadn’t been award winners, but the french toast wasn’t bad at all. Once Steve managed to not burn it.

The pizza arrives half an hour later, a stack of four boxes, and consuming it is like reaching Nirvana. Bucky knew what pizza was, but he didn’t actually remember eating it. He maybe never wants to eat anything else now. Except for bacon. And french toast. And those tiny oranges that are so easy to peel and taste like… _ feel _ like Bucky’s had them before. The taste wasn’t familiar, but the warmth in his chest was.

"Hey Steve," he says when they’re starting to slow down on the pizza. "The little oranges, did we used to eat those a lot?"

"The clementines? Yeah, I guess we did, when we could get our hands on them. They were easy to stick in our pockets when we were kids. We’d go out walking as far as we could, and share them when we stopped to rest."

"What else did we do?" Bucky asks, spinning his stool around to face Steve, and pushing the pizza box aside.

Steve smiles, settling into storytelling mode. He tells Bucky about hitching rides with strangers, and borrowing bicycles from friends. Sneaking around at the docks and flying high at Coney Island. Riding the wheel as many times as they could. 

Bucky feels it, for just a moment. He's up on top of the world with the wind in his hair, and Steve yelling like a madman beside him. Swearing up and down that he can see his ma's house, and the factory Bucky works in, and any other place he can think of just to say he can spot it from there. 

"You thought you could see the whole world," Bucky says.

"I _ could," _Steve tells him, trying to be firm, but losing it to a bright, boyish smile, just like the one Bucky gets to see in his head now. "You remember?"

"Just that."

"That's a lot," Steve says, and Bucky thinks so too. 

It's slow going though, over the next few days. The little bits and pieces that come back to Bucky. There are no big bursts of them like when Steve hugged him, but Bucky hasn't wanted to try for another hug because he's not sure about some things. The things Steve said after Bucky's nightmare that didn't make sense. 

He wants to touch Steve, but doesn't know if it's okay, so he just sits with him instead. Letting Steve's words open up tiny windows inside him, through which he gets glimpses of things he'd thought were gone. Shivering in a one room apartment. Pressing his ear to a thin, shaking chest and listening for the rattling inside. Stroking soft, blond hair off a sweaty forehead. 

"Did that happen a lot? You being so sick like that?"

He thinks it did. He'd felt the exhaustion and worry and resignation in the little memory that pulsed through him when Steve said something offhand about it. They're sitting on the living room floor by the big back window, because there's a nice patch of sun there and Bucky wanted to be in it.

"It was pretty often, yeah. Winter was always the worst."

"You were always so cold."

"And now you are," Steve says, and then his eyes widen a little before he scrunches his face up apologetically. He looks very dumb, and also cute. 

Bucky's not sure if it's okay for him to think that, but he's found the thought popping up more and more, especially since the day of his eight hour nap. Steve's been so careful, trying not to bring up things that make Bucky uncomfortable. He's terrible at it, keeps making the same mistakes over and over, and then squaring that stubborn jaw of his and trying again. 

Every time he does it Bucky gets a burning through his limbs. That muted, tingling one that means something familiar is happening, even if Bucky can't quite place it. He likes seeing how determined Steve is. He likes the look in his eyes, and the way he's never afraid to apologize, and the way his whole body lights up with it when he says something that makes Bucky's lips turn up.

He likes Steve. 

"Buck, I'm sorry," Steve's saying, so Bucky tries to focus. 

"It's fine," he says. "I _ am _usually cold."

"Do you think... it's just that it's _ not _ actually cold, so do you think... I mean, why do you think that is?"

Bucky shrugs, even though he knows. He knows it's in his head and not actually in the space around him. He hated the chair and the things it did to his head just as much as the cryo-chamber, but the chamber scared him in a way nothing else did. Those long moments where it was silent and closed in, and all he could do was wait for himself to slowly shut down. He'd always get flashes, while he was still aware, of snow and blood and panic. Of the deepest ache in his chest that he didn't understand until recently. Now he knows it's the memory of having fallen from the train, and knowing he would never see Steve again. 

"Buck?"

"It'll be okay."

"What... what do you mean?"

"I'm not cold with this," Bucky says, resting his hand on the knitted blanket that's spread out on the floor beneath him. The good one. It's a million shades of blue. Like Steve's eyes, and Bucky's, and the dark of night and the pale beginning of day. Like the jacket that Bucky Barnes, fallen comrade, wore when he stood fierce and proud at Steve's left side. "I think it'll be okay."

Steve's face does something complicated, and then he nods his head, his fingers clenching in the blanket. Bucky has the same feeling now that he did in the ferris wheel memory, like he wants to reach out and grab Steve's hand. 

He thinks about it. He thinks about asking if he can. 

And then there's a knock on the door and Bucky goes cold even with the blanket there. 

"Who is that?" 

They haven’t ordered pizza, or Chinese, like they did yesterday. There shouldn’t be anyone here. Not a stranger, and not one of Steve’s friends who will not think it’s okay that the Winter Soldier is sitting on Steve’s floor.

"I—I don’t know. It’s probably nothing Buck, let me check. No one will see you if you stay there."

Hiding behind the couch like a naughty child. Like a prowling assassin. He doesn’t like it, but he stays in place, listening to Steve pad over to the door and just open it right up like an idiot. _ You have a peephole you jackass, what do you think it’s for? _

"Sam," Steve says. "What are you doing here?"

Sam is the man with the wings. The wing, singular, because of Bucky. Steve has been texting him nervously the last couple days. Clearly failing at convincing him that he is fine and doesn’t need visitors.

"What are _ you _ doing here? You haven’t left this place since you went to Brooklyn, and it’s not like there isn’t plenty a super soldier could be doing right now. You know, in the wake of SHIELD collapsing and all that?"

"Right, right," Steve says. "I’ve just been... you know I’ve been distracted, Sam. I just need a little more time to—"

"The hell’s going on in your kitchen?" Sam cuts him off, and Bucky cringes. The kitchen is still a mess from when they made lunch earlier. They were experimenting with macaroni and cheese, and there are still empty pasta boxes and trails of shredded cheese all over the counter. The sink is piled with way more dirty dishes than one person could produce. There are two glasses sitting side by side on the counter bar. "Are you… is he _ here?" _

Bucky braces himself, then gets to his feet before Steve can try to muster up a poorly delivered lie. He wants to take the blanket with him, but he doesn’t want to be that Bucky in front of this man he doesn’t know. The patchwork Bucky that Steve thinks is just fine, but no one else would. 

He squares his shoulders and tries to put on his soldier face instead, but it doesn’t slip into place the way it used to and he wants the blanket even more.

"Jesus Christ," Sam says. "Are you kidding me?"

"Sam—"

"_Why _ wouldn’t you tell us?"

"He’s not—"

"He’s the _ Winter Fucking Soldier, _Steve, that’s what he is!"

Bucky's not sure what Steve says next, because he’s not the soldier and he can’t go back, he can’t go back, but this is it. Sam won’t believe him and someone will take him and there won’t be any more tiny oranges or sheets that smell nice or Steve watching Bucky from the corner of his eye just because he’s glad he’s there. 

He won’t be there, he won’t be with Steve, he’s cold, he’s cold, he’s cold. And Steve’s talking still, but Bucky can’t hear what he says.

* * *

It lasts longer this time than when Bucky shut down that day in the kitchen, or the time after his nightmare. It feels worse, because it’s completely Steve’s fault, and Bucky looks so, so far away. Down on his knees in the patch of sun they’d been so happy in just minutes before. Hands clenched and shaking in his lap, hair hanging in his face.

Sam joins them at first, talking to Bucky calmly, telling him he’s checking his pulse before pressing his fingers to Bucky’s wrist, then stepping back to give them space. Bucky just stares straight ahead the whole time, like he’s seeing things that aren’t there. Maybe the same things he dreams about. Things that should just be nightmares, but have been far too real for him. 

"Buck, I’m so sorry," Steve tells him, crouching right next to him but afraid to touch him, in case that makes this worse. "I’m sorry. You’re safe. I swear you’re safe."

There’s no reaction from Bucky for so long. Long enough that Steve gives up on not touching him and takes both of Bucky’s hands in his. Telling him the same things over and over. That he’s there, that Bucky’s not going anywhere. That it’s just them, and everything is okay. And finally, finally, the tension eases out of Bucky’s hands, the focus comes back into his eyes.

"Hey, there you are," Steve says softly, leaning in closer when Bucky starts to slump to the side so he can hold him up. 

"What…"

"You’re alright. Sam is here, but it’s alright, Buck. You’re not going anywhere."

Bucky’s shoulders stiffen again as his eyes find Sam, standing up from where he'd been seated on one of the kitchen stools. Sam approaches them slowly, his hands held open and slightly in front of himself, so Bucky can see he isn’t holding anything. 

"I think… we got off on the wrong foot there," he says, sitting down a few feet away. 

"I broke your wing," Bucky says, as if that’s what Sam’s talking about.

"You did, yeah. But that’s… not what I meant, man. I’m fine. They’re not attached to me, you know. I’m not _ actually _a falcon."

"Mine’s attached," Bucky says, curling and uncurling his metal fingers. "It would hurt, if you took it off. I didn’t know."

"Ah," Sam says, and Steve bites his lip so he won’t cry or say anything embarrassing. He hadn’t realized Bucky’d been worried about actually hurting Sam. He barely even knows anything about how Bucky’s arm is attached to him. Never seen the place where skin meets metal.

"No worries," Sam goes on. "Didn’t hurt me. And I came in here with my big loud mouth and scared you, so I guess we can call it even, huh?"

Bucky doesn’t say anything, and his shoulders are still tight under Steve’s arm, but he’s here, at least. Not shaking anymore, not slipping away. 

"Look, man, I was just worried about Steve. If I don’t have to be worried about Steve with you, then we don’t have a problem. The wing’s water under the bridge."

Still no answer from Bucky. He feels so heavy, leaning into Steve’s side the way he is, and Steve knows he’s got to be exhausted. He’s probably already on the brink of crashing. "You want to rest a little, Buck?" he asks.

Bucky nods, but his eyes are still on Sam. Watchful and uncertain.

"I’ll tell you what," Sam says. "I’m gonna sit my ass right over there on that nice big couch of Steve’s, and whenever you’re ready to talk a little, we’ll talk. That’s it."

"You won’t call anyone?" Bucky asks.

"Who are you afraid of me calling?"

"Anyone," Bucky repeats.

"Okay. I won’t call anyone," Sam promises. 

Bucky looks minimally reassured, but he’s swaying on his feet when Steve helps him stand up, and he doesn’t argue when Steve tugs him towards the bedroom. 

"Buck… I’m really sorry," Steve says once Bucky’s lying down, the blue blanket tucked around him. "I didn’t tell anyone, I swear."

"Probably should have. You can’t lie for shit."

"Yeah, that’s… that’s true."

"He doesn’t trust me."

"He will. Give him a chance to know you."

"_You _don’t know me," Bucky says, as if they haven’t had this conversation three times already. 

"I know you just fine, Buck. You were impossible before, you’re impossible now. Not that much has changed."

"Fuck you," Bucky says, without any heat at all, his eyes fluttering closed.

"I’ll be right here when you wake up," Steve whispers, resting his hand on Bucky’s head for just a moment, and resisting the temptation to place a kiss there too. Bucky’s already asleep, and if Steve were ever to kiss him, even just on the forehead, he’d want Bucky to be awake for it.

"So…" Sam says, when Steve comes back into the living room. 

"I really wish you’d called first, Sam."

"I really didn’t know he was_ here, _ Steve. We could have avoided this."

Steve lets out a heavy breath as he drops onto the couch, on the side Bucky normally sits. "He’s scared to death of someone coming and taking him. HYDRA, or SHIELD, or… God, I mean, same thing, I guess. Anyone who’s gonna try to use him for something. He thought you’d turn him in."

"Who the hell would I turn him in to? I trust about three people on this planet at this point."

"Did I make the cut?"

"Barely," Sam says, glaring at him. "Your dumb secret keeping ass is _ just _ hanging on to spot three."

"I just wanted him to feel safe."

"And what about you, Steve? If someone _ does _ find him, and they undo whatever you’ve managed to do, who's gonna keep _ you _safe?"

Steve doesn’t say what he’s thinking, which is that _ Bucky _ will, because they tried to erase Steve before but he was still in there. Bucky was still holding on to him.

"I don’t know," he says aloud. "He’s not the Soldier anymore though. And I know, I know, he’s not the Bucky I grew up with either, but he’s _ good, _ Sam. He doesn’t want to be what HYDRA made him."

"What if he doesn’t have a choice?"

"He _ does._ He’s here because he’s making a choice. He’s been here for almost a week, and you want to know how many times he’s chosen to try hurting me?"

"I’m guessing that’s zero."

"Zero," Steve confirms. "He does have a choice, and if someone tries to change that…"

"Uh-oh, I see Captain America’s determined face coming on. Dare I say, almost an _ ass whooping _ face."

"I’m not letting anyone take this away from him, Sam."

"Alright," Sam says with a resigned exhalation. "Alright. But we’ve got to have eyes on him, at all times."

"I _ just told you—" _

"To make sure no one _ gets to him, _ you overprotective dumbass."

"Oh," Steve says. "Right. So how do we do that?"

"We’re gonna have to get your boy on board with accepting a little help."

Steve doesn’t point out that Bucky isn’t his, or that he has no idea how they’re going to do this. Sam said _ we, _and if Steve’s got Sam on his team, then maybe they can really do this. Get Bucky on board, get Bucky safe. Really safe, not just hiding in Steve’s bed for the rest of his life.

"What’s up with that blanket?" Sam asks after they’ve been sitting in comfortable silence for a while.

"I made it."

"No kidding?"

Steve shakes his head. No one would kid about such a terrible knitting job.

"Ugly as_ sin." _

"Yeah," Steve agrees. "Bucky likes it though."

"Hm," Sam hums thoughtfully. "Explains some things."

"Like?"

"He likes the blanket, he likes you. There’s no accounting for taste, I guess."

Steve grins and shakes his head, trying not to get too hung up on Sam’s words. He knows Bucky likes him, of course he does. Not the way Sam’s insinuating though, he’s sure of it. At least, he’s sure about Bucky from the past. 

Sometimes, a few times, Steve has wondered about this Bucky. Just the way he looks at Steve every so often. The way he smiles softly at him like Steve’s doing something so great, when he’s not doing anything at all.

It’s probably wishful thinking. Like smelling the river still when it was miles away and days behind him, because he just wanted to be close to Bucky somehow. Like he always has.

"I’m gonna check on him," Steve tells Sam. "You alright here?"

Sam holds up his phone and taps on a brightly colored icon for a game app. "I’m good. Check away."

There’s nothing to check, really. Just Bucky sleeping soundly, his hair in his face and the blanket tangled around his legs. He’s fine the way he is, but Steve busies himself anyway, straightening the blanket. Hesitating a moment and then brushing Bucky’s hair back with his fingers. 

Jesus, he’s still so beautiful. He’s a new beautiful. He’s... whatever he is, Steve’s tired of trying to put a name to it when it doesn’t really matter. He’s right here, and he makes Steve’s heart race and his palms sweat. Still. Again.

"Bucky Barnes, what am I gonna do?" Steve whispers to him. "How am I supposed to not love you?"

He already knows the answer to his question, though. There is no _ not loving _ Bucky. All of Bucky’s old girlfriends, and all the ugly whispers about boys who liked boys that they heard in the school yard couldn’t stop him before. A plane crash, an endless icy ravine, and seventy god forsaken years couldn’t stop him after, so that’s it. He’s just gonna love him, whether or not Bucky ever did or ever does feel the same way.

_ But maybe, _ he thinks—letting himself stroke Bucky’s hair one last time, and then catching his breath when Bucky leans his face into Steve’s hand in his sleep—_maybe it would be okay to hope things might be different this time around. _

Probably just more wishful thinking, but Steve’s beginning to think there’s nothing wrong with doing a little of that. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s something new in his head when Bucky moves between sleeping and waking. More than one something. Steve asleep on Bucky’s floor, with his face still young and soft. Steve asleep across the room from him, more angular, and frowning while he dreams. Steve folded up in Bucky’s arms, feet cold against his shins, wheezing breaths pressing back against his chest. 
> 
> Bucky opens his eyes and Steve is there, half tucked under the good blanket with him. So that’s where the new memories came from. So many nights spent with this guy who says Bucky didn’t love him.
> 
> Still doesn’t make sense.

There’s something new in his head when Bucky moves between sleeping and waking. More than one something. Steve asleep on Bucky’s floor, with his face still young and soft. Steve asleep across the room from him, more angular, and frowning while he dreams. Steve folded up in Bucky’s arms, feet cold against his shins, wheezing breaths pressing back against his chest. 

Bucky opens his eyes and Steve is there, half tucked under the good blanket with him. So that’s where the new memories came from. So many nights spent with this guy who says Bucky didn’t love him.

Still doesn’t make sense. 

He stays there for a while, enjoying the heat of Steve next to him, and the way he manages to look noble and concerned while he’s unconscious. But then other memories start to drift to the forefront of his mind. Recent ones, from the arrival of one-winged Sam who doesn’t really have wings. These memories are fuzzy even though they shouldn’t be. Not faded by time, but by Bucky slipping out of a moment that was too much for all the parts in his head that don’t know how to work together yet. 

Sam is still here, he knows that. The question is, did Sam tell the truth? Is there anyone else waiting out there? Bucky doesn’t think Steve would let that happen if he were aware of it, but Steve is in here, stupid and asleep. With his stupid, handsome hero face. Doesn’t he know his face was always good? Every time Bucky gets another image of it—another moment, another smile or frown—he can’t believe Steve thought he ever needed to be more than he was.

Steve shifts a little, breathing in deep and letting the air out slowly, and Bucky remembers the rest of it. Some from Steve’s stories, some from the little flashes in his head. The weak heart; the aching, crooked spine. The pneumonia and the blood stained tissues. It’s good that those things aren't hurting him anymore. And this face is good, too. This bigger, stronger one. There’s still the same eyes, the same lips that look vaguely dissatisfied when not curved into a smile, in a way that gives Bucky the nice burning feeling. It makes him want to give the lips a reason to soften. He thinks it probably always has. 

There’s a small cough from outside the bedroom, and Bucky remembers Sam again. He slips out from under the blanket, leaving it to keep Steve warm, and tells himself that he can do this. He can talk to Steve’s friend, who forgave him for the broken wing (but probably not all the other things the soldier did), and do it without losing himself. 

Bucky is not the soldier. Sam is not here to take him. He's not going back and no one is going to fucking make him.

(Except they _ could_, and that's what sits in Bucky's bones like ice.)

Sam looks up when Bucky steps into the living room, and sets his phone aside.

"That was a hell of a nap."

"How long?"

"Four hours."

He's done better, but bragging isn't polite. 

"Steve asleep?" Sam asks, and Bucky nods. "You alright hanging out alone with me? I don't mind if you want to wait till he's up."

"I'm alright."

"Okay. Good. So I'm thinking we just start over. Right now."

Bucky waits for more clarification.

"I'm Sam Wilson," Sam says, offering his hand. "Served in the Air Force, and now I help out at the VA. Word on the street is you're a war hero yourself."

Bucky shakes Sam’s hand, but he's not sure what to say. 

"Your name," Sam says in a fake whisper out of the side of his mouth, like he's slipping Bucky the answer.

"Bucky. Barnes, I guess."

"You guess?"

"I don't remember a lot of being him. I’m not a hero anymore."

"Well, Bucky Barnes, you want to know what I think?"

Bucky nods, folding his hands in his lap now that the handshake is over. It feels weird not having the blanket to fiddle with. He's gotten used to it.

"I think," Sam says, "that war is hell. And you've been in your own extra hellish warzone for longer than I can even wrap my head around, and that can really mess a man up, am I right?"

Bucky nods again, because Sam _ is _ right, but Bucky already knows he's messed up. These aren't new thoughts.

"So I think," Sam continues, "given where you've been, you need to give yourself a little grace. A _ lot _ of grace. The shit that happened with Zola and HYDRA? The fact that you're sitting here right now trying to be your own man again? I don't know what you think makes a hero, but I think I'm looking at it."

Bucky was not expecting that. It doesn't make any sense.

"But... you were upset, that I'm here."

Sam waves his hand dismissively. "Yeah, because Steve's an idiot and he should have told someone you were here from the start, in case you didn't have your head on straight. You _are_ a risk. You know that."

"I don't know what to do," Bucky says as he nods again. "I don't want to be."

"And that's why I've reconsidered my _ possibly _rash initial reaction, and am trying to help you now instead of kicking your ass."

"You… think you could kick my ass?"

"You think I _ couldn't?" _

"We already have solid proof that—"

"This sounds real productive guys, so glad you're having this chat," Steve says, cutting them off as he comes into the room with fluffy bedhead, and the good blanket over his arm.

"Friendly disagreement," Sam says with a grin. "Barnes and I were just getting to know each other."

"Yeah? You doin' alright, Buck?"

"I don't like the way you ask that as if I can't be _ trusted, _Steven," Sam says with wide, hurt eyes, holding a hand to his heart. 

Sam Wilson is kind of a shit. Bucky thinks he might like him. 

"I'm alright," he says with a small smile. "Sam says he wants to try to help."

"Sam's a great helper," Steve says. "What are you thinking, Sam?"

"Sam thinks a lot of things," Bucky says, and Steve's smile turns into a wide grin.

"Was I just… called out? By this hundred year old ex-assassin cyborg?"

"Ninety-seven," Steve corrects. "Actually."

"Goddamn," Sam says. "The hell am I doing hanging out with you two."

Steve laughs and squishes onto the couch beside Bucky, settling the blanket over his shoulders for him. If Sam thinks it's weird, he doesn't say anything. 

He says a lot about what he thinks they should do now, though. About HYDRA being a real threat still, and needing to be vigilant about keeping Bucky away from them, for his own sake and Steve's, while they work on stomping out every last base they can find. 

Bucky agrees with all that, but he doesn't like some of the details when Steve starts asking how Sam proposes they do this.

"I think you should bring Stark on," Sam says. "Daddy Warbucks has all the resources we need, and he’s your friend, Cap. He’d want to help."

"Stark?" Bucky asks, not sure at first why that name taps at something inside him.

"He’s uh… he’s Howard’s son. You knew Howard in the war."

"I knew him after that," Bucky says with a shake of his head. His memories as the soldier are fractured and interspersed with big empty spaces of black and cold, but he remembers Howard and Maria Stark. He remembers ending them. "I killed him."

Steve bites his lip, but he doesn’t look surprised. "I know. It was in the files Natasha found."

Natasha is the other friend that Steve has been trying to lie to. She’ll probably turn up here soon, too. 

"Howard Stark’s son is not going to want to help me. I would never ask him to."

"I would," Steve says. "Tony’s a good man. Let me at least try talking to him. He knows about… what happened."

"Then he wants me locked up. Maybe I _ should _just be—"

"No, Bucky, you shouldn’t. You’re not getting punished for something you didn’t choose to do."

Steve’s face and the particular tone of his voice right now are setting off a series of little cracks inside Bucky. The kind that leave a window behind that lets him see something new. This is Steve, right here; the one he’s known forever. Stubborn and certain.

"I’d say you’ve already _ been _ punished, anyway," Sam points out. "Don’t you think you’ve done your time?"

Could he do enough time to make up for ending lives? Does the amount he owes change because he couldn’t stop himself?

"I don’t know."

"I do," Steve says. "And I think talking to Tony is a good idea."

_ Good for you, Steve, but you’re not the one who killed his parents. _

"Bucky?"

Bucky has his hands over his eyes because this is getting to be too much again. He likes the problem solving nature of their discussion, but he doesn’t like the solutions. Every person who knows about him is another chance that the wrong person finds him. And then he loses himself. And Steve.

"I don’t like it," he says into his palms.

"I know," Steve says, setting his hand lightly on Bucky’s shoulder. 

"Let’s take a break," Sam suggests. "Maybe order some food in."

"Yeah, good idea. Pizza okay, Buck?"

Bucky nods and puts his hands down, but doesn’t look up at Sam and Steve. It’s too hard thinking about all of these things, and also making eye contact.

"Pineapple," he says to his lap. 

"Alright. Lots of pineapple," Steve agrees, then shoves Sam when he makes a gagging sound.

Sam continues to be a shit. Bucky will probably appreciate it more when he’s had some food. And another nap.

"Would Tony Stark be able to tell me why I’m so tired?" Bucky asks, once Steve has stepped away to call for pizza.

"I can probably tell you that," Sam says. "Your mind’s doing a shit ton of recovery right now, Barnes. You’re processing more than you probably even realize and that’s exhausting."

"Will I get better at it?"

"If you take care of yourself, sure. But you’re gonna have to put in the work, and don’t expect miracles from yourself."

"He already kinda is a miracle though!" Steve calls from the kitchen.

"That’s... _ nice _ one, Rogers. Not at all the point, but very romantic."

Steve’s eyebrows draw together before flying up towards his hairline. "I meant because he’s—he fell out of a train! In _ 1945!" _

"Just get us some dinner," Sam says, flapping a hand at Steve. Bucky wants to keep watching Steve because his cheeks are very, very pink and it’s a good look on him, but he needs to focus a little more still, on the helpful things that helpful Sam has to offer.

"How do I put in the work?" he asks, even though Steve is still sputtering something about physics and forces of gravity. 

"You pace yourself, first of all," Sam says, eyeing Bucky thoughtfully. "Right now you need to eat and I think you need a break, then we can talk about this some more. You’re gonna have a whole lot of talking ahead of you."

Bucky doesn’t really like that idea, but he hates the way his head feels now. The way everything is so tangled, the way it traps him. 

"To you?" he asks.

"I mean... I think you could do with someone more qualified than me. I work with PTSD, but you’re…"

"Yeah," Bucky says. Who even knows what exactly has happened in his head. Who would ever be able to sort it out.

"You can talk to me too, though. And I’ll see what else I can find for you. Or what Tony can find. Between all of us we’ll figure out what you’ve got going on and what we can do about it, so we can stop worrying about some HYDRA shithead messing with you."

Bucky’s surprised to find that his eyes are wet, and he ducks his head down a little lower, letting his hair fall in his face. That seems like way too much to hope for. But Sam is Steve’s friend, and Steve literally stands for truth and justice, so he’s probably not a liar. He probably at least really means to try.

"Okay."

"Okay," Sam says too, holding out his hand to Bucky, fingers curled into a fist.

"What?" Bucky asks.

Sam looks dismayed, but doesn’t put his fist down. "It’s a _ fist bump, _ man. You… like this." He grabs Bucky’s hand and lifts it up, pressing it into a matching fist, then tapping it with his own. "We coulda had a moment there."

"Next time," Steve says. He’s leaning against the kitchen counter, watching them with a smile that’s almost smug.

"You should have already taught him that, Rogers. This is on you."

Steve just keeps smiling, and Bucky is tired as hell but he thinks it was good, after all, that Sam showed up here. Good for him, and good for Steve too. Noble Steve who doesn’t like lying and wants his friends to get along. Bucky doesn’t remember if he was always like that. His memories so far have all just been him and Steve, no one else. 

It’s alright that Sam is here now, but Bucky's glad that later, whenever Sam goes home, it will just be him and Steve again. _ It’s just you and me. _

Those words don’t give him the glass shattering feeling, so he doesn’t think that’s something either of them used to say. But the Steve of today has said it a lot to the Bucky of today, and there’s something just as nice about that. Maybe even nicer. 

* * *

Steve has talked a big game, but he’s actually kind of terrified of talking to Tony about Bucky. They’d already discussed it briefly, when he was staying at the Tower after just getting out of the hospital. Tony was there when Natasha gave Steve everything she'd found on the Winter Soldier. He left for a full hour after they saw the mission file, the kill order. When he came back he didn’t say a word.

"Tony…" Steve had said. "He’s… he _ knew _ your dad. We were all friends. He never would have chosen to do this."

"Doesn’t really make a difference in the end, does it, Cap?"

Not to Tony, no, not right then. But it did make a difference. It made a huge one to Steve. "If we can find him—"

"Not right now," Tony said. "I can’t even…" He’d shaken his head again, still red and puffy around the eyes. "I don’t know if I even want to find him. You definitely don't want me to."

But Bucky found Steve, so they’re going to have to try to talk about this again.

He lets himself wait until Sam has said goodnight and gone back home. And then he lets himself wait longer because Bucky’s still awake, and Steve's not having this conversation in front of him. 

They’ve been sleeping separately still, aside from that one night that Steve stayed with him. But right now they’re both sitting on the bed, because it’s comfortable and the reading light is good in here.

Steve is working his way through all the classics that he missed. Bucky is reading trash magazines, which delights Steve to no end. 

"You don’t even know who these people are," he’d pointed out when Bucky first pulled one out of the stack Sam left there months ago. Specifically so Steve could have a better grasp of popular culture.

"Look at this dress," Bucky had said, pausing on one of the fashion spreads from some awards show. "It has _ feathers." _

He’s snickering over a gossip page now, and Steve tries to keep his smile to himself. Bucky always was interested in everything. He loved finding out about people, speculating about how things worked, daydreaming about all the places they’d travel if they ever had the money. Of course when they did travel, it was only for the war, and it was nothing like their idle fantasies. 

There’d been one time though, when they had a couple days leave, that Steve had almost been able to pretend they were living out their dreams. Except Steve was so much bigger than he used to be, and Bucky hadn’t gained back the weight he lost while Zola had him, so things still felt turned around. And Steve had been going crazy on top of it all. After almost losing Bucky, he felt like he needed to seize this second chance to tell him how he felt. 

It would have been the perfect time. The rest of the Commandos were still at the bar when Steve and Bucky started the walk back to their room. Taking their time and letting their shoulders bump as they went, because it was still so good to be back in the same place. To be reassured that the other was alive and _ right there. _

"Hey, Buck?" Steve had said, and when Bucky looked over at him Steve was struck for the millionth time by how beautiful he was. His hair soft and messy, instead of neatly slicked like he’d been wearing it before the war. His eyes so bright under every golden streetlamp they passed beneath that Steve didn’t know what they even needed lights for. He didn’t need anything else, just Bucky.

"Whenever you’re ready," Bucky had joked, watching him with feigned impatience. 

Steve wasn’t ready. How was he supposed to find the right words for this? And what was even the point when he knew good and well that Bucky wasn’t like him? Honesty was important, sure, but not when all it would do was make Bucky uncomfortable. Force him to let Steve down easy, and then leave him stuck with the knowledge that his best friend was in love with him.

"Stevie, what? You’re makin’ me nervous."

"Nothing, sorry. I’m just... it’s crazy, isn’t it? Here we are, strolling the streets of France."

"Without a care in the world," Bucky had said with a rueful grin. "Ain’t it grand."

"We could pretend, just for a bit."

"What, that there’s no war? No HYDRA?"

"Right," Steve said. "Just a couple’a Brooklyn boys, out on the town."

"Are we pretending we’re in Brooklyn, too?"

That wasn't what Steve had meant, but he liked that idea. "Sure. Be nice to be home, wouldn’t it?"

"Yeah," Bucky said after a long beat, the word falling out like a sigh. He leaned into Steve’s shoulder and didn’t pull back again. "Yeah, it sure would."

His voice was so wistful and tired, the shadows under his eyes so dark, and Steve had stopped thinking about telling him things he didn’t need to hear. Bucky just wanted to go home, and Steve just wanted to get him there. Anything else could wait until then. 

"Steve," Bucky says now, pulling Steve back to the present. "Mind if I sleep?"

He’s closed the magazine he was reading and set it aside, and the blue blanket is already spread over him, pulled up close to his chin. Steve can’t help wishing he were the one keeping Bucky warm, but this isn’t a bad alternative. At least he had a hand in it.

"Of course," he says. "And thanks, Buck, for talking to Sam and everything. For being open to this."

Bucky bites his lip as he nods. Maybe it’s a stretch to say he’s _ open, _ but he’s doing his best, and Steve knows how much it’s taking out of him.

"We can take it easy tomorrow, okay? Nothing has to happen yet."

"Okay. Maybe french toast though."

"Yeah," Steve grins. "Definitely french toast."

Bucky smiles just a little, then shuffles further down in bed so the blanket comes up past his mouth, and closes his eyes.

Steve finds himself literally incapable of handling how cute Bucky looks like this, and leaves the room as quickly as possible.

_ Focus, Rogers, _ he tells himself. Bucky may finally be home now, but that’s not enough anymore. Steve needs to make him safe, too.

And he needs to talk to Tony. 

"I don’t know if you’re aware," Tony says immediately upon picking up, in lieu of a hello, "but it’s currently eleven thirty—no, eleven thirty-_one, _ in fact—and men of your advanced years should most definitely be abed already."

"Have you just been waiting for me to call past 10 PM so you could say that?"

"Possibly. What’s up? Is this important? I assume it is since I haven’t heard a peep from you in a week, and now here you are ringing me up past curfew."

"It is important. You have a minute?"

"Uh oh. I do, but I may choose not to give it to you."

Steve closes his eyes and thinks about Bucky, needing him to do this. "Tony, listen...I—"

"Is this about your frostbitten super pal? Because I already know you’re looking for him, and I—"

"I found him. He... he found me."

Silence.

"Tony…"

"I’d like to remain on friendly terms with you, Cap, so I think I’d prefer not to talk about this."

"Friendly terms? Is that what we’re on?"

"Are we not?"

"I mean, I thought we were actually... friends."

There’s another long beat of silence, and then an equally long puff of air. 

"What's his mental state."

"He's… all of the adjusting is hard, but he's remembering things, slowly. And he's himself now. Not HYDRA's."

"Unless they get their paws back on him. Or their tentacles? Would that be more accurate?"

"That's… yeah, Tony. That’s why we could really use your help."

"I don't know. I'm not stupid, I understand the mind-control logistics of it all, but I don't… it was still his hand that took my mother's life away."

Steve doesn't know what the hell he can say to that. Yes, it was, but a hand can't do a thing without the mind telling it to, and Bucky's mind was not his own. He knows Tony already understands that too, though. 

"He hates what he did. I know that doesn't take it back, but… Tony, he's my family. He took care of me my whole life, and I can't—I _ won't _just leave him to pick up all the pieces HYDRA left him in. He would never do that to me."

"He's not my family though. He took my family."

"HYDRA took your family. I don't want them to take anything else."

"You'll have to let me think about it."

"Okay," Steve says. "Okay yeah, of course. Thank you for hearing me out."

"Don't be obnoxiously polite, your boy scout routine doesn't work on me."

"I was—would you lay off? I was genuinely thanking you!"

"You sound cranky, Cap. Get that geriatric ass into bed before things really get hairy."

"Goodnight, Tony. Talk again soon?"

"Don't rush me. I'm not as long in the tooth as you. I can take my time."

"I'm hanging up now."

Tony hangs up first, which is not unexpected. 

All in all, that definitely could have gone worse. Tony has every right to struggle with this, but he has a good heart—as much as they all joke about him not having one at all—and he tries to do the right thing just as much as Steve does. Sometimes they don't think the _ same _thing is the right thing, but they can definitely agree on HYDRA being wrong. 

It's close to midnight now and Steve really should get some sleep, but he peeks in on Bucky first, because he can. 

"Oh," he says, startled to find Bucky sitting up, arms wrapped around his knees and eyes already turned towards the door. "Sorry, was I talking too loud?"

Bucky shakes his head. "Was that Tony Stark?"

"Yeah. Sorry Buck, I didn't know you were still up."

"Is he coming?"

"What... here? What do you mean?"

"Is he coming to get me. Or sending someone. Will you let me try to get a head start?"

"_What? _ Bucky no, that's not—no one's coming for you, that's not happening."

Bucky doesn't look like he believes him. He looks wary, and weary, and Steve can't believe he'd ever think he'd be kept here by force, so someone could come and take him away. 

"He needs some time to think about it, about how involved he's willing to be, but he's not—he won't do anything to you, Bucky. And I would _ never _let that happen anyway, how can you—"

Bucky turns his face away—resting his cheek on his knees so he's curled in a ball, and about as far away from Steve as he could get without actually moving—and Steve makes himself stop and take a breath. Bucky's brain must be telling him a million conflicting things. He spent literal decades being hurt, being alone, being told his only worth lay in what he could do for the men who pulled his strings. He's spent less than one _ week _ being shown that he matters. That Steve wants to give him everything and it’s just because he loves him. Because Bucky is worthy of love.

Of course he can't believe that yet. 

Steve sits down on the bed, easing himself slowly closer to Bucky, and then wrapping his arm around him. 

"It’s okay that you’re scared. It’s okay that you can’t trust any of this yet. Just keep forgiving me when I forget how hard this is, okay? The super serum didn’t make me any smarter, unfortunately."

Bucky doesn’t say anything, but he lifts his head and turns to rest against Steve's temple. Steve holds Bucky’s head in his hand, fingers wound through his hair, and pulls him as close as he can. 

"I meant it, Buck. Till the end of the line. You’re not getting rid of me this time."

"I didn’t want to," Bucky says, voice thick and almost too quiet to hear. "I didn’t want to. I wanted—"

Steve knows. He’ll never, ever forget Bucky’s face, the moment he lost his grip. If they’d just been able to reach each other…

"Me too. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry."

"Wasn’t your fault."

It was. Steve got him into that mess in the first place. He got him into it, and he didn’t get him out.

"Buck, can I stay in here tonight?"

Bucky nods, curling in a little more so his face rests on the side of Steve’s shoulder, wet cheeks and warm skin pressing into his thin T-shirt. He lets Steve ease him back so they’re leaning against the pillows together.

"No one’s coming?"

"No one’s coming. Just you and me."

"Okay," Bucky says. "Okay."

Steve presses a kiss to the top of his head, because what the hell. He’s not just _ in _ love with Bucky, he loves him. Above everything else, he just loves him. And Bucky damn well deserves to feel that.

* * *

There aren't any new memories when Bucky wakes up, even though Steve is asleep with his arm thrown across Bucky's stomach and his face smashed into his chest. That's okay though. He probably doesn't have the energy to take in anything else after yesterday. He feels drained still, almost weak after how tense he was last night. So this is nice, just being close to Steve in this moment. Even if Steve is definitely drooling. 

When he finally stirs he makes a little humming sound that gets deeper when Bucky ruffles his hair, then abruptly breaks off, presumably as he fully wakes up.

"Hey, sorry, wow," Steve says, sitting up so fast he's liable to get whiplash. "I didn’t mean to… is that drool?"

"It’s fine," Bucky says. "It’s your shirt."

He’s been wearing nothing but Steve’s clothes, since all he has is the one outfit he stole after following Steve into the river. Steve seems fine with it, though. He usually looks over whatever Bucky puts on appreciatively, before doing something similar to what he’s doing now. 

"But still, I—" Steve looks at several things that are not Bucky, and he seems awfully embarrassed for someone who has definitely spent the night this close to Bucky before.

"It was nice, Steve."

"Oh… okay." Steve rubs the back of his neck. It’s stupidly cute. Bucky doesn’t think he’s going to bother trying not to think that anymore.

"We shared a bed before, didn’t we?"

"Sometimes, yeah. In the winter mostly. It just got so cold, and..."

"Hm," Bucky says, and Steve doesn’t say anything. 

Maybe, the Bucky from before _ did _ love Steve, but Steve was too awkward for Bucky to ever tell him. Or maybe Bucky was just a coward. He needs to remember more before he can make a call on this either way.

It’s also possible that Steve was telling the truth, but if that’s the case then Bucky was a lot stupider than Steve has led him to believe.

They have a slow morning, taking turns showering, and then pouring bowls of cereal for breakfast, because yesterday was exhausting all around. Today’s a little exhausting too, because Bucky can’t shake the fear that someone’s going to change their mind and come arrest him, even though Steve says that won’t happen. 

"Have you told Spider Woman about me now?"

"Spider… you mean Black Widow? Natasha?"

"Whatever. Yes."

"No," Steve says with a lopsided smile. "Is it okay if I do?"

"If you don't, she'll turn up suddenly because you sucked at convincing her nothing’s going on."

"You know, for someone who keeps pointing out what a bad liar I am, you’d think you’d trust me a little more," Steve says, and then his whole face frowns suddenly, the way it does when he thinks he’s screwed up. He doesn't know that the way he consistently talks before he thinks is maybe one of Bucky’s favorite things about him so far. "Sorry, I didn’t mean that. I know why you—"

"It’s okay," Bucky says, cutting him off.

"You’re not obligated to trust me."

"I know."

"I do _ want _ you to, though."

"If I let you draw me will you stop talking for a while?"

Steve’s eyes go round as saucers. "What—really? Are you sure?"

"I’m not taking my clothes off."

There’s a combination of glaring and blushing happening now. Steve’s reactions are all so satisfying. 

"Obviously. You’d be too cold."

Bucky glares now too, but he doesn’t actually mind the joke. "You can draw me naked, with the blanket."

"Oh my God."

"Drape it over me, all seductive like."

"It’s the ugliest goddamn blanket."

Bucky shakes his head. "It’s perfect."

"You’re weird, Buck," Steve says fondly. "You want to go back in the bedroom? You’ll be in the sun there."

"I’m not _ actually _ taking my clothes off. Even with the blanket."

"I know, Jesus. I just want you to be warm."

Bucky smiles at Steve, because he knows that will make him happy, and he’s looking a bit harassed now. "Okay," he agrees. 

He sits in the comfortable black chair by Steve’s bedroom window. Not naked. Wearing a long sleeved, white thermal shirt with three buttons coming down from the collar, and jeans that are a little too tight around his thighs because they belong on Steve.

"What do I do?" he asks.

"Whatever you want, I can just do some sketches. You don’t have to hold any position for too long."

"Do I look at you?"

"You don’t have to. You can."

Bucky doesn’t. He turns to the side and looks towards the bed that they’ve left unmade. He doesn’t embarrass easily—at some point in his time with HYDRA all his shame was stripped away from him and he just started feeling nothing—but having Steve’s eyes on him in such a focused way now… it makes him feel _ something. _ They’d joked about it before, about Steve getting to stare to his heart’s content, but this is different than the staring. This is studying. This is Steve tracing him with his fingers and his pencil, even if he’s not actually touching him. 

Bucky definitely does not feel cold right now. 

"That was great, Buck," Steve says after several minutes have passed. "You can move now. Give me another angle."

"I don’t know what angle I was giving you before."

Steve laughs softly, setting his sketchbook down and coming over to help. He adjusts Bucky’s position with careful hands, moving him one way, and then changing his mind and guiding him so his arms are bent. His hands behind his head, almost as if he’s stretching. 

"That’s, um… that’s good," he says. "You okay holding that a bit?" 

"Sure," Bucky says, even though he feels a little weird this way. The angle of his arms is lifting and opening his chest, making his bicep strain and his metal arm shift and whirr. It seems... pretty damn intentional.

He waits until Steve is perched on the side of the bed again, pencil scratching away, to say, "Are you drawing my muscles, Steve?"

"Yes," Steve says, not looking up from his work. If he thinks Bucky can’t see him blushing this way, he’s wrong. "You have nice lines," he adds crisply.

"Okay," Bucky says, and then he flexes because why not, and Steve’s eyes widen when they flick up to Bucky again.

"Asshole," he says, still blushing.

"You told me to sit like this."

"Stop talking, I’m trying to do your face."

Bucky grins, so that Steve has to draw him that way, and Steve tries very hard not to smile.

"Okay, one more?" he asks when he finishes his sketch. "Or we can stop if you want."

"One more is fine. Should I…" he holds his arms out at his sides, flexing again in a strong man pose.

"Stop it, you pain in the ass," Steve laughs. "Just, no, just put your arms down, and then—here."

He gets up again and straightens Bucky’s shoulders out so he’ll be facing Steve head on. "I just want to draw your face this time. Can I…" His hand hovers next to Bucky’s cheek, not quite touching. Bucky nods, and then Steve’s fingers brush his skin. Warm and sticking to him a little with sweat. (Bucky catalogues that detail.) His other hand presses below Bucky’s chin, angling him so his head is tipped back slightly, and leaning a little to the side. "Hold it just like that, and then eyes on me," Steve says.

"Do I smile?"

"Do you want to?"

Bucky attempts not to just to be contrary, but he feels his lips tugging up in defiance, just at the edges. 

He keeps his eyes on Steve like he's supposed to, which was demanding of Steve, but not in a bad way. And now Bucky gets to watch the way Steve keeps pulling his bottom lip between his teeth and biting at the inside of his cheek. The way he narrows his eyes and clenches his jaw when he’s really focusing, erasing something and filling it in again. Their eyes meet every time Steve looks up at him, and that’s nice but also a lot, with how intense Steve is when he’s working. The way looking at Bucky to draw him feels a lot like he's looking right _ into _ Bucky. 

Bucky goes from feeling pleasantly warm to very unpleasantly cold out of nowhere.

"Can we stop."

"Huh?" Steve looks up again, confused at first, and then focusing. "_Yes, _ of course, are you—"

"I’m fine. I just…" He needs Steve to stop looking at him, even though he liked being looked at by him a moment before. "I don’t know. I need to stop."

Steve has already stopped. He’s dropped his things and come to sit on the floor next to Bucky, because Bucky’s sitting curled up in front of the chair now.

"I’m so sorry, Buck. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable."

Bucky shakes his head. Steve didn’t _ do _ anything. "You didn’t, you just… you—how can you look at me like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like you’re seeing everything about me and you don’t… you don’t look away."

"I don’t know what you mean, Bucky. Why… should I _ want _ to look away?"

Bucky always wants to, still, when he catches his reflection in Steve’s bathroom mirror. He sees the weapon attached to his side and the ugly scars around it. Shadowed eyes and lines that weren’t there on the old Bucky’s face. He looks worn, and he knows why. And he hates that.

"You know who I’ve been," he says. Steve knows how far he is from the bright-eyed boy who was capable of actually looking out for someone else. He knows the things he did, the things done to him, that brought him to where he is now. He knows all of those things, so how, _ how _does he look right into Bucky the way he does, and then just keep looking?

"Yeah," Steve says, shifting so he’s kneeling in front of Bucky now instead of next to him. "I do. And I know who you are."

"Not really."

"God_ dammit, _ Bucky. I know you, I do. There’s still a lot for me to learn, but… of _ course _ I wanna keep looking at you. You," he repeats, gripping Bucky’s shoulders in his hands. "This you, right here. With all your sass, and your honesty, and your…" He trails off, eyes moving over Bucky’s face like he’s trying to find the right words there. "_You, _ Buck."

"I’m not sassy," Bucky mutters, dropping his eyes.

"You fucking are."

Bucky smiles down at his hands. He doesn’t like the way everything just got away from him there so suddenly, but he likes that he could tell Steve. He likes that he didn’t even think of _ not _ telling Steve, even though for so, so long there was never any point in asking someone to stop. 

"Sorry, for getting weird."

"It’s fine, Bucky. This is a _ lot, _ all of this, and it means… it means so much that you let me draw you at all. And that you talk to me. When you need to."

"Can I see them?"

"The drawings?" Steve asks, reaching over to grab the book from the bed when Bucky nods. "Don’t make fun of me."

Bucky takes the book after Steve flips it to the first sketch and hands it to him. He holds it in front of himself, studying it the way Steve studied him. The pencil strokes are bold and loose in this one, capturing the shape of Bucky in easy lines. The set of his jaw, the line of his shoulder. There’s something soft in his expression that Bucky hadn’t realized was there. He’d been nervous, excited almost, but there’s a warmth in the way Steve’s sketched out his face that calls to something else. The way Bucky had felt looking at the rumpled sheets next to them. At the cover pulled away from the ghost of two people, pressed close together. 

The next drawing has more careful lines, more attention to detail in the way the fabric of Bucky’s shirt bunches in some places and pulls tight in others. In the lines around his eyes that look happy here instead of tired. Bucky hasn’t smiled in front of a mirror in… ever. He supposes he doesn’t actually know what it looks like. Steve makes it look nice. The easy curve of eyes and lips, the way his head is tipped forward, relaxed. 

"Is this what I look like?" Bucky asks.

Steve nods, his eyes on the drawing too, and a smile on his lips that’s so soft it’s hard to look at. 

Bucky turns to the last drawing and looks at that instead. This one has a different weight to it, with more time spent brushing color into Bucky’s lips with a fingertip, filling out the texture of his hair, detailing the light reflecting on his eyes. 

It’s strange how Bucky can see that big black and white picture of _ Bucky Barnes: Fallen Comrade _ in this portrait, even though it looks like him now, too. It has the broader, sharper lines, the stubbled jaw and the hair that falls to his shoulders. But there’s something in the eyes, in the lips—vulnerability, stubbornness, the hint of a smile being possible—that was there before, too. 

He thinks it’s like what Steve has been saying to him, about it not being one or the other. About old and new being part of each other, not separate.

"What do you think?" Steve asks, when Bucky has been quiet for several minutes.

"You’re very talented," Bucky says.

"That’s not what I mean."

He knows, but he doesn’t know how to say what he thinks about everything else. How it feels to be able to look at his face through Steve’s eyes. To see the familiarity, the ease with which Steve brought him to life, and the way he didn’t miss a thing in doing so. Old or new. 

"I like the way you look at me."

Steve’s breath catches a little, Bucky can hear it. And then he waits while Steve takes a turn being quiet.

"I’m glad," Steve says, once he finds his words. "I’m glad, Bucky."

Steve repeats himself a lot. He says Bucky’s name a lot, too, like he’s just so glad for the chance to. That bothered Bucky a little, at first, when he was just trying not to think of himself as the soldier. And trying to believe that Steve really knew this wasn’t Bucky Barnes from the 40s, strolling back into his life unscathed. Unchanged.

It doesn’t bother him now, though. Steve gets it, that there are old parts and new parts, and some kind of whole formed out of all of them. He gets it more than Bucky does, probably. 

But maybe, if he’s got Steve here, seeing him the way he does, Bucky will start to get it too. Maybe he’ll try looking in the mirror some time, and seeing if he can find the same man Steve thinks is there. One who’s not the same as he was, but is still worth seeing. One who makes Steve get that _ smile _ that’s there again now. Shy and hopeful, and filling Bucky up to the top with that burning, breaking feeling that means he knows this, he’s _ felt _this. 

He’s made Steve smile like this before, and he’s doing it now, and God, he doesn't want anything more than the chance to try to do it again and again. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s let it all distract him. Bucky’s pale eyes that look at Steve with _something_ in them, not emptiness or doubt now; his sturdy legs in the pants he borrows from Steve; the soft bow of his upper lip. Steve's been sneaking glances at these things, storing up every smile he can bring to Bucky’s face, and letting the days go by. But the fact is HYDRA is out there and Steve should be doing something about that. 
> 
> "Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just… I think we need to…"
> 
> "You need to get back to real life," Bucky says, his hand lifting away and curling in the blanket on his lap instead.
> 
> "No, I—this _is_ real life, Buck, you and me."

Steve knows he should probably be following up with Tony and Sam, but he told Bucky they’d take it easy the day after Sam’s visit, and they did. And they took the next few days easy too, because Bucky needed it, and Steve… he really loves taking it easy with Bucky. 

After he’d drawn him (and then after Steve had locked himself in the bathroom for a full fifteen minutes, because drawing Bucky—having Bucky's eyes on him like that, open and warm; getting to see Bucky soften while he looked at the sketches after, knees pressed to Steve’s—was really a lot to take), they’d made french toast just like they’d planned. This time with peanut butter spread over it and sliced bananas on top. 

They’d spent the rest of that day reading quietly, talking about things Bucky didn’t remember, and every once in a while, things that he did. The three days after that were much the same, except instead of making french toast they'd made lasagna, then street tacos, then a pizza with a disgusting assortment of toppings that had made Steve gag and Bucky laugh. It was just a small laugh, but it happened. It made it so hard to even think about bringing up Tony or leaving the apartment, or any of the things they probably should be doing. 

"Stop doing that," Bucky says on the fourth day. They’re on the couch, like they usually are, and Steve realizes his knee has been bouncing only when Bucky sets his hand on it and holds it still. "What is it?" 

"Nothing!" Steve says. "It’s...it’s—" Bucky’s hand has not left his knee. How can he be expected to remember what he was trying to say?

"What? You’re making me nervous."

He looks nervous, and Steve is immediately overridden with guilt for making that happen, and for continuing to do so because he's losing his mind over his friend’s hand on his knee. 

It’s been hard, since the morning Steve drew him—when they sat on the floor together after and it was the closest Steve's felt to Bucky since finding him again, even though they’ve been physically closer. Not _ bad _ hard, just… just a persistent aching. An almost painful joy at the closeness, at Bucky’s trust in him. A buzzing in his stomach, like he’s fifteen again and Bucky’s hand just brushed his as they walked side by side.

He’s let it all distract him. Bucky’s pale eyes that look at Steve with _ something _ in them, not emptiness or doubt now; his sturdy legs in the pants he borrows from Steve; the soft bow of his upper lip. Steve's been sneaking glances at these things, storing up every smile he can bring to Bucky’s face, and letting the days go by. But the fact is HYDRA is out there, and they _ should _ be nervous, and Steve should be doing something about that. 

"Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just… I think we need to…"

"You need to get back to real life," Bucky says, his hand lifting away and curling in the blanket on his lap instead.

"No, I—this _ is _ real life, Buck, you and me—but I know you’re worried about someone finding you, and I don’t want you to have to feel like that all the time."

"Tony Stark hasn’t called. He either doesn’t want to help, or he isn’t ready."

"Maybe. Sam’s ready, though. He wants you to come down to the VA and try out his group there, but I know you won’t go as long as you’re worried about HYDRA."

Bucky turns his face away from Steve, which either means he doesn’t want to talk about this, or he’s willing to, but having a hard time.

"You said when I was ready," he says, barely audible.

"I meant it, I won’t do anything without your say-so. But we need to talk about it sometimes so I know where you are with it."

Bucky lets out a slow breath, his fingers still moving restlessly in the loops of the blanket, and Steve waits quietly. He knows Bucky’s trying.

"We don’t have to right now," Steve says. "You asked what I was thinking about... that was it."

"Okay."

"I’ll try to stop tapping my foot obnoxiously."

"Okay," Bucky says, with a twitch of his lips.

"I could draw you again, if you want to keep me occupied."

"Stop trying to get me naked, Steve," Bucky says, finally turning back to Steve just in time to see the color rise in his cheeks. 

"Do you want a fun fact?" Steve asks quickly, ready to turn the tables.

"Sure."

"You used to walk around naked all the time when we moved in together. Didn’t even think about it, just came out of the shower with a towel over your shoulder and strolled around looking for something clean to wear."

This doesn’t seem to embarrass Bucky at all, but he does look thoughtful. "Why wouldn’t I just wrap the towel around myself?"

"Beats the hell out of me. Too lazy, maybe."

"Maybe. Or maybe... I just wanted to get your attention."

Steve’s mouth goes dry and he convulsively tries to swallow, which feels something like choking. "I—I don’t think so. You got plenty of attention."

"From you?"

Why does Bucky do this? _ How _ does he go so quickly from being closed off, to being so open it makes Steve sweat like he’s standing right under the sun. Exposed and lit up and burning from head to toe.

"That…you didn't—"

He's saved from having to say this out loud again—that Bucky never wanted that kind of attention from him—by tinny music erupting from his phone. Tony's name and number flashing across the screen.

"Speak of the devil," Bucky says lowly. 

"I’m gonna answer."

Bucky nods, leaning back against the couch and pulling his feet up so he’s curled in a ball. Steve wants to let the phone ring and just stay there with Bucky, with his arms around him, but he needs to at least hear what Tony has to say. 

"Tony, hey," Steve says, getting to his feet.

"Oh you _ are _ alive. Good, good. Not like I was over here worried about the amnesiac assassin murdering you in your sleep or anything."

"...were you?"

"I just said I wasn’t, pay attention. A phone call would have been nice though."

"You—you_ specifically _ said not to rush you. I was giving you space."

"Well, that’s neither here nor there. How _ is _ your live-in homicidal boy-toy anyway?"

"He’s—God, Tony, could you just not? Seriously? He’s fine, he’s… he’s a little anxious."

Bucky’s eyes flick over to him and he raises his eyebrows. 

"What?" Steve whispers to him.

"Understatement," Bucky says.

"Oh!’ Tony says with false delight. "Is that him? Am I being graced with—"

"Tony, stop. Do you want to talk or just be an asshole?"

"Those are... not mutually exclusive activities."

Steve sighs. At least Tony is self aware. "No, they’re not."

"As it happens, though," Tony goes on, "I’ve decided to do something very non asshole-ish and allow you to bring… _ Bucky? _ Is it?"

"Mhm."

"Over to the Tower so we can… get acquainted."

"That sounds ominous," Steve says, and then regrets it because Bucky’s listening and his eyes narrow in response.

"I’m trying to help you, Cap. Accept it or don’t."

"You _ cannot _ be an asshole to him."

"Did we not just? Go over this? What do you want me to do, put tape over my mouth? In the immortal words of Popeye, I am what I—"

"_Tony." _

"Steven."

"This is really important to me. He’s… _ he’s _ really important to me. Please."

Tony is quiet for a moment, and so is Bucky, with his eyes on Steve.

"No promises," Tony says finally. "He _ did _ kill my parents."

"Not him."

"Semantics."

That sounded like a reflex, so Steve lets it go. "Thank you, Tony."

"Sure. Whatever. Be here tomorrow and plan to stay at least a few days."

Steve opens his mouth to say he’ll need to talk it over with Bucky first, but Tony has already hung up.

"So, uh…" Steve begins, sitting back down next to Bucky. "You can say no, okay? You can say no and we’ll wait and that’s okay."

"But…?"

"But Tony would like us to come to Manhattan tomorrow."

"Tony sounds legitimately terrible."

"He’s… he’s not really. I mean he _ is, _but he’s—Buck, will you think about it?"

"What will happen there?"

"I don’t know, but nothing you’re not okay with."

Bucky’s jaw is tight, his eyes rounded in a way Steve hates to see, because he hates for Bucky to be afraid. 

"We can come back here anytime you want. And I swear, I won’t leave you for a second. Not once."

"Perv," Bucky says, but it doesn’t come out sounding like a joke, as he must have meant it to. His voice is too brittle, his hands too white-knuckled. 

"We don’t have to go. You say no, and we’ll wait. Really."

Bucky is shaking his head slightly, but Steve doesn’t know if that’s an answer or just an attempt to process. He thinks probably the latter, as Bucky starts mumbling after that. "I don’t know, I don’t know," over and over.

Neither does Steve. He puts his hand on Bucky’s knee and rubs little circles on the side of it with his thumb. He wants to push for this, and he wants to step back and give Bucky all the time in the world, because he should never have to be pulled in directions he doesn’t want to go again.

"I’ll tell him we’re not coming. It’s okay," Steve says, when Bucky has gone motionless and silent, but still won’t look at Steve.

"_No." _

Steve waits, giving Bucky space to be okay with saying no, and with whatever else he wants to say.

"No, I can’t just—I don’t want to sit here wrapped in a fucking blanket for the rest of my life, while you waste your time waiting for me to get my shit together. I can’t _get it_ _together,_ Steve, I need…"

Steve takes Bucky’s hand, lacing their fingers together and feeling Bucky’s sweat on his palm.

"I need help."

"I know," Steve says softly. "Not wasting my time, though. No matter what. This isn’t wasting my time."

Bucky exhales harshly, opens his mouth like he’s ready to argue, then just shakes his head. "Why are you so stubborn."

Steve shrugs, squeezing Bucky’s hand.

"God, you’ve _ always _ been like this, haven't you?"

"Are—are you remembering something?"

Bucky’s eyes are closed, but he keeps his hand tight around Steve’s and nods his head. "I usually do. When you touch me."

There are a lot of things hearing those words makes Steve feel. All of them are embarrassing, but he never wants it to stop. "What did you just remember?"

"Just your face, over and over again. Clenching your jaw and shooting fire from your eyes. _ I’m fine, Bucky. I had to fight him, Bucky. Stop goddamn worrying about me Bucky, I can do this." _

Steve knew, all those years, that he could do whatever he felt he needed to because he had his mother, and because he had Bucky. Their strength was always his strength, but maybe now his can be Bucky's.

"So can you," Steve says, and Bucky opens his eyes, red-rimmed and a clear grey-blue. 

"Maybe," he says. "I don't know. But I'll go with you."

Steve wants to tell Bucky he loves him. He wants to say he’s so proud of him it’s splitting him in two. He wants to touch his face, and let his thumb brush the red of his lips, and thank him again and again for still having the old Steve tucked away inside him.

He just nods though, because his tongue is dry and his throat is thick, and they’re sitting here still holding hands, which probably says a lot.

* * * 

"I didn't mean that," Bucky says after a while. He doesn't want to interrupt this quiet moment, with Steve holding his hand so tight, but this is important. "About the blanket. It _ is _ a good blanket."

Steve looks confused, and then his eyebrows draw together like he's upset, except he's smiling that soft little smile and holding Bucky's hand even tighter, so he must not be. 

"I know, Buck," he says. He looks like he wants to say something else after that, but he just looks down at the floor, and then his goddamn phone rings again. 

"I hate that thing."

"I know, I know. I don't have to answer it."

"It's Spider-Woman."

Steve's face becomes both fond and beleaguered. It makes Bucky's chest burn nicely, and he's pleased that he's apparently always been able to make Steve look this way. 

"Black Widow, but you know that. I can call her back."

Bucky shakes his head. He wanted to just stay here in the peace and comfort of Steve's company and his warm hand, but he knows this is inevitable. First Sam, then Tony Stark, now Natasha. They're going to come into his bubble with Steve, and Bucky's going to have to hope to God that they're as trustworthy as Steve believes. 

"Go ahead. I'm going to shower."

He already did that this morning, but he's covered in cold sweat now after Tony's call, and the hot water and solitude of Steve's dark-tiled shower sound nice. Better than trying to listen to Steve talking to Natasha about him without his body doing weird things. The sweating and the shaking and the breaths that come too quick. 

Steve looks uncertain, so Bucky puts on a smile for him before leaving him to his phone and his friend who is probably about to berate him for trusting Bucky. The soldier _ did _ try to strangle her. Of course, she got a garrote around his neck too, so maybe they're even on that front. 

He turns on the water as soon as he's in the bathroom so he won't be tempted to eavesdrop. So his blood pressure won't rise while he tries to determine how the conversation is going, and how likely it is that Black Widow's going to silently come in through a window and take matters into her own hands. 

By habit he keeps his eyes averted from the mirror, but just before stepping into the shower he gives himself a quick glance. Not his body, he already knows how much he hates his scars, but his face. 

It's startling. Not in the way it's been before, when he's been jarred by the flatness of his eyes and the depth of the shadows under them. It's… it's not bad. He looks a little less cripplingly exhausted. Less like he lives in a cage. Because he _ doesn't _ now, except for the one that lingers at the edge of his senses. The prickle of fear that bites at his skin when he stumbles upon one of his words. _ Their _ words. _ Longing, rusted, furnace—_

Bucky jolts forward, slapping his hand over the reflection of his face so he doesn't have to see his own panic. 

"You're _ fine," _ he says out loud. "You're fine, you're fine, you're fine."

He doesn't check to see if the Bucky in the mirror believes him. The shower is hot and waiting for him, and Steve is… Bucky laughs to himself softly, once the curtain is pulled closed behind him. Steve is hot and waiting for him too, so fuck you HYDRA. Fuck you Zola and Pierce and Rumlow and everyone else. Fuck all the fucking words in his head that he never wanted there. All the blood and the helplessness. This goddamn arm that makes his whole back ache all the fucking time. 

Maybe he's not fine. Maybe he's cracked the tiles of Steve's shower with his metal fist before he even knows what he's doing, and maybe he's crying on his knees while the water falls on his head, going from hot to warm to cool. 

"Buck?" Steve calls, knocking on the door when the water has turned all the way to ice. "You alright in there?"

No. Maybe. The punching and crying helped, but now he's tired and cold and he hopes he didn't lock the bathroom door. 

"Bucky?"

Steve.

"Buck, you're worrying me. I'm coming in, okay?"

The door is locked after all. Bucky can tell because it doesn't immediately open. There's a lot of rattling, followed by a cracking sound, and then quick footsteps and a shower curtain being yanked aside.

Steve doesn't say anything. Not _ Bucky, you idiot, _ or _ Jesus Christ you're worse than I thought. _He shuts off the water and crouches down with Bucky, soaking the knees of his jeans. He wraps a towel around Bucky and holds him awkwardly, their heads bumping together every time Bucky shivers. 

"You were so good at keeping me warm," Steve says eventually. Bucky's still too cold and stiff to move, but Steve's breath on his ear feels like the sun. "I gotta pick up my game. Can't let you show me up."

"Y-you were tiny. I'm not."

"Maybe you don't know this about me, but I happen to like a challenge."

Bucky laughs through his chattering teeth. "You m-must... love me, then."

"_Yeah, _ Buck," Steve says, like it wasn't a joke. Isn't a joke. He helps Bucky to his feet and doesn't say anything about the cracked tiles as they leave the shower. Bucky doesn't say anything about the broken door handle lying on the floor. 

They get into Steve's bed, the wet towel left on the floor and the covers pulled up over them. Steve is warm, warm, warm, pressed to Bucky from their chests down to their feet, and Bucky wishes he hadn't gotten himself so drained because now he's too tired to really appreciate this. Can't even stay conscious long enough to pull some new memories from the heat of Steve's body. He breathes in with his face against Steve's neck, and the scent of sweat and soap is a pleasant burning in his chest as he falls asleep. 

He's alone when he wakes up, but not cold. The good blanket is tucked around him, on top of the comforter. Sweatpants and a thermal shirt are folded up next to the bed, with thick woolen socks stacked on top. Bucky is still naked, which is probably why Steve didn't stay. Why, though? Because he wants Bucky? Because he doesn't?

He loves Bucky. He said as much when they were still in the shower, and nothing else really matters beyond that.

Bucky dresses quickly so he doesn't have to feel the chill of the air on his skin for long, and follows the scent of coffee to the kitchen. The coffee is for Steve, but there's water being kept hot on the stove for Bucky's tea, too. 

"Hey," Steve says. "How are you feeling?"

Bucky shrugs, taking a mug down from the cupboard. "Clearly I don't need any help from Tony Stark after all."

"That was my takeaway too," Steve says, but his eyes are full of emotion, empathy and concern. 

"I'm okay," Bucky says. "I just—I've never had space to really think about… everything, and now it's kind of flooding me, I guess."

"You know I'll take anything I can for you, right?"

Bucky doesn't want to pour his darkness into Steve. He doesn't know if it even works that way, if he can just let some of it spill over into Steve's cupped hands when it's too much for him. 

Steve's looking at him with his bright, earnest eyes though—his golden hair and his golden heart—and maybe he has enough light in him that he can just burn away some of Bucky's dark. 

"Yeah," Bucky says. "Thanks, Steve."

Steve likes when Bucky says his name. He gets his shy smile and his eyebrows do something cute. It makes Bucky want to just say it over and over, but maybe first… first they should deal with this other stuff. With Bucky sobbing in the shower, and Tony Stark waiting ominously in a tower to do who knows what to him.

"What did your spider friend say."

"Oh, she was… she was a little pissed at me, but it's okay."

"She's lethal, Steve."

"So are you."

Touché. But Bucky doesn't want her dead anymore, and the same probably can't be said for her.

"Will she be at Tony's?"

"She's gonna go with us, and Sam, too. Tony wants us to be protected on our way, in case… you know."

He knows. He thinks it's only about Tony wanting Steve to be protected, though. He wouldn't give a shit if Bucky was taken out, and Bucky can't blame him. 

Except… he didn't _ want _to kill Howard and Maria. The soldier did, because his wants weren't his own, but Bucky… he doesn't want to die for the soldier's sins. Not now, not when he has Steve. The slivers of memories that make Bucky's chest ache, and the Steve that's right in front of him, making him want a future even in this strange, broken century that he thought he didn't belong in.

"What time?" he asks.

"They'll be here at nine tomorrow. We should… pack a bag."

"Why."

"We'll need a little time there, Buck."

That's probably true, but how could Bucky possibly sleep in a building full of people he's hurt? How can Steve be so goddamn trusting?

How can _ Bucky _ be, for that matter? Because here he is, going along with this.

"Is it weird if I take the blanket?"

"No, of course not."

It is, but he'll take it anyway. Because he wants it, and because Honest Steve really doesn't think it's weird at all.

"Steve…"

"Hm?" Steve says, eyes turned down while he focuses on pouring hot water over Bucky's tea bag. 

_ I like you a lot. I've been wondering what would happen if I kissed you. What would I remember? What have I forgotten? How could I possibly have not always loved you when just looking at you feels like fire? _

Bucky shakes his head when Steve looks up at him, like he forgot what he wanted to say. He takes the mug of tea and cups it between his hands, giving Steve a real smile instead of all the things he doesn't know how to say.

It takes him through the rest of the late afternoon, through dinner, and through reading together on the couch after, to say one thing he really wants to. Especially now, when they're about to leave this place and share each other with everyone else. 

"You should sleep in your bed tonight."

"What? No, Buck, I want you to have it."

"_With _ me, stupid. It's not like we don't both fit."

"Oh! Yeah, I mean… yeah, yeah I guess we do."

The tips of Steve's ears are bright red. That _ has _ to mean something. Right now, at least, even if it means nothing about who they were before. 

"Yeah," Bucky says, mostly to tease Steve for saying it so many times. 

"Shut up." Steve shoves him when he says it, long fingers lingering just a little too long on Bucky's shoulder.

_ Make me, punk, _ Bucky says in his head. Not this Bucky, but the voice of a memory. A younger Bucky who hooks an arm around a younger Steve's neck before wrestling him to the ground. Both of them laughing and landing pulled punches, until Bucky lets Steve pin him and throws his arms above his head in defeat.

"Don't," Steve says in the memory, pouting down at Bucky from his perch straddling Bucky's thighs. They're only thirteen and fourteen, and Steve's bones are as fine as a bird's. "I don't need you to let me win."

"No one _ lets _you do anything, Rogers," Bucky laughs. "You're a goddamn force to be reckoned with."

"Quiet," Steve says with a glance over his shoulder, as if his Ma will hear Bucky cursing from all the way across town at the hospital where she works. "Don't patronize me."

"I don't even know what that means. Get up, Stevie. How the hell are you heavy enough to be cuttin' off my circulation?"

The memory ends there, with Steve smiling and pressing a hand over Bucky's face to shush him. It doesn't really end though, because it's in Bucky's head now, for him to return to whenever he wants. For him to look at now and know that not once was he ever trying to patronize Steve. He meant every word he said to him. He knew all along that Steve's spirit was stronger than anything. Stronger than that damn heart of his that they all knew wasn't going to last nearly long enough.

"Buck?" Steve says now, his fingers finally lifting away.

"I'm ready to go to bed," Bucky says, not wanting to wait anymore. He won't try anything, not anything that could make Steve uncomfortable—he won't even think about kissing. But Steve likes being close to him, and that's all Bucky wants. Just to hear Steve's healthy heart working. To feel safe all night. To remember more and more with Steve right beside him.

Steve smiles, the color fading from his ears now. Just a hint of pink left behind. "Okay, yeah."

Yeah.

They clean up the kitchen together first, then Steve goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth. Nudging the broken handle out of the way with his foot.

"I'll fix that when we get back," he says, catching Bucky's eye as Bucky goes past to the bedroom. 

"Doesn't matter," Bucky says. He doesn't need to keep Steve out. "The shower… probably needs some help though."

Steve shrugs, like the broken tiles don't bother him any more than a missing door handle. He catches Bucky's wrist and squeezes it lightly before turning back to the mirror.

It's enough, just that little touch, to knock out another pane of glass inside Bucky and leave him with something full of color. Steve laughing with his head tipped back, and Bucky scowling in front of a grimy handheld mirror. Cuts along his jaw from his first attempt to shave. The scowl gives way to a crooked grin because he _ does _ look like an idiot, and Steve's laughter sounds like goddamn flowers blooming.

Bucky smiles. He'll tell Steve about this memory once he comes to bed. 

He steps into Steve's room and it's so quiet when it happens. Not what he's been fearing at all, but it should have been. He knows how HYDRA drifts through the night like a ghost, the way they taught him to. 

It's just silent hands covering his mouth. Another pair injecting something into his neck that feels like ice, and a voice whispering right next to his ear. Like he made this happen by thinking these words to himself when he thought he was safe. 

_ Longing. _

No, _ no… _he doesn't want this. Not to be wrestled out Steve's window, heavy and helpless. Not to be hearing these goddamn—

_ Rusted. _

He _ never wanted _ this.

_ Seventeen. _

It never mattered.

_ Daybreak. _

But he's not the soldier now, he's not. He's himself. He's Steve's.

_ Furnace. _

He's not...

_ Nine. _

He's...

_ Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight car. _

* * * 

It takes so long for Steve to even process it. That Bucky isn't there. That an entire pane of glass has been removed from his window, spilling darkness onto the chair where Bucky sat in the sun and let Steve look inside him.

It takes far too long, but then he flies. His phone already at his ear as he leaps out the window to scale his way down the fire escape, so fast he's not sure he's even touching it. He should have grabbed his shield, but how could he stop for anything? This pause right here, now that he's reached the ground, is killing him. It's lasting an eternity. But which way did they go? 

"_Tony," _ he almost shouts, when the ringing in his ear stops and is finally replaced by a voice. He's running to the east because it's darker that way, and HYDRA is a shadow. "They got him. They got Bucky. I need—I need—"

"Woah, slow down, slow down. Who got him? Did you see them?"

"I came out of the bathroom and he was gone, they—"

"He was gone? How do you know he didn't just leave?"

"What? Because he _ wouldn't, _ and my window's broken and the blanket is there and Bucky's _ not. _ HYDRA _ took _ him Tony, goddammit—"

"Okay, okay. I'm tracking you and I'm on my way. I'll send any help that's closer than I am."

Steve leaves his phone on and shoves it in his pocket. He wants both hands free so he can break anyone who's hurt Bucky, except he doesn't know where they fucking are. 

He still doesn't when Sam overtakes him fifteen minutes later, and still not when Natasha appears out of thin air, or when Tony drops out of the sky, gleaming red and gold in the streetlights. Steve's body doesn't hyperventilate anymore, but it still feels like he's going without air.

"Focus, Cap," Tony says, tapping Steve's cheek. "Sam and I are going up, you and Natasha stick together down here and knock these out one by one." He's flashing a hologram of a map in front of Steve's face. Any known or suspected HYDRA bases within fifty miles, anything even _ possibly _ related to HYDRA, is marked on it. "More likely than not they're close, and they're quiet. We just have to bring the party to them."

"He's fine," Sam adds, squeezing Steve's shoulder. "He knows how to fight."

"But if they—"

"With his mind, too. Have some faith in your boy."

He does, but HYDRA plays so dirty, and Bucky was supposed to be safe. He was supposed to be curled up next to Steve right now with his blanket wrapped around them, not left in a heap on Steve's bedroom floor. 

Steve shakes his head, getting that image out of it and only letting himself see coordinates and street names. Steps towards getting Bucky back.

They come up dry on one hit after another, and Steve is not panicking, he's not, but it's been over an hour now and what if they're _not_ close? What if they're on a train? What if _another goddamn_ _train_ is taking Bucky where Steve can't reach? What—

"Two armed guards on a rooftop, two blocks north of you and Widow," Sam's voice says from the comm device Tony slapped over Steve's wrist before taking off. "Building's not on the list, but we're checking it out."

"I'm coming," Steve says, already sprinting.

"_We're _coming, jackass," Natasha says on his left. "Or are you going to try to pretend you don't need me?"

Of course not. This is all his own damn fault, for thinking they could be safe just by isolating themselves. He was so stupid to just stay in that building, so far away from the rest of the team. So stupid to not know they were being watched, being listened to, letting HYDRA know just when to strike. Just before they had reinforcements coming to take them to the Tower.

"Hard earned lesson," Steve says over the pounding of his feet and Natasha's light, quick stride. "But Bucky has legitimate trust issues, and I—"

"Just took out the guards," Sam says over the comm, cutting Steve off. "How far are you?"

The building is just ahead of them now, narrow and pale. Steve has probably passed it before, just jogging through the city.

"Here. Going in the side," Natasha says when they come around the building from the back. "Quick and quiet, boys."

"Roger," Sam says, and the comm goes quiet. 

Natasha does something deft and mysterious with the lock on the door (Steve really does need her) and then they're in, slipping into the darkness of a quiet office building, lit dimly by safety lights high on the walls. 

"Not abandoned," Natasha breathes. "Not a HYDRA base either. Doesn't seem planned."

"Maybe Bucky changed their plans." 

Natasha raises her eyebrows, as if to say _ we'll see. _

They have to. They can't go in there and see Bucky gone, replaced by dispassionate eyes and hands that have forgotten how gentle they used to be with Steve. 

Tony and Sam find them before any of them find Bucky, but finding him isn't hard at all once the screaming starts.

"_No," _ Steve shouts, charging ahead of the team. Tony's next to him within seconds, body parallel to the ground as his suit powers him forward. Steve's not even sure which one of them breaks down the door, or if they both just fly through it at once.

He's not sure what he's seeing, once they're inside. There's Bucky, hair loose and wild, lips colored with blood, but he's not the one screaming. His arms are chained behind his back to a metal chair that's in pieces. Two agents lie at his feet, breathing but completely immobile. Two more stand at a careful distance, shouting words that don't mean anything to Steve, but have Bucky screwing his eyes closed, roaring as he charges the agent on his left. He cracks his head into hers before spinning and taking her down with the back of the chair still strapped to him.

_ "Longing! Rusted! Seven_—fucking _ seventeen!" _ the remaining agent shouts, and Tony and Steve just watch as Bucky leaps at him, scissoring his legs around his throat and slamming him to the floor.

Bucky's lip is split, face scraped and stained with blood. His sweater, that is actually Steve's sweater, is shredded, his metal arm damaged—turned at an awkward angle at the elbow—but he didn't need saving at all. He gets to his feet, fists clenched and shaking, and faces Steve with bloodshot, heavy-lidded eyes. It's too dark to see the color of them. Too dark to see what those words have done to him, even if he's shaken them off now.

"Bucky?" Steve says carefully, his heart a stone in his throat.

_ Who the hell is Bucky? _ he hears in his head. He'll never forget that. 

Bucky looks up, shaking the hair out of his face. 

_ Please know me, please know me, please— _

"The hell took you so long?" Bucky says. 

Steve lets out a broken sound and rushes forward, but Tony's iron hand clenches around the back of his shirt.

"Not so fast loverboy, you are_ not _that stupid."

"He is, actually," Nat says dryly, coming up beside them. "He really is."

"What—"

"Make sure he's not fucking with you first, you imbecile," Tony says, yanking Steve backwards. "Listen, Barnabus—"

"Barnes," Bucky says, not making a move towards them.

"It's...it's a _ joke, _ Terminator, but it completely defeats the purpose if I have to explain it to you, good God."

"_Bucky," _ Steve says. "What happened? Tell me what's happening."

"I don't... I don't remember, not all of it. Just bits between your place and here, I was in and out… but then they showed me that." He nods towards a long table at the side of the conference room. There's a file on it, thick and water stained, with a photograph of Steve paperclipped to the front.

"Me," Steve says.

"My mission," Bucky says with a nod. A chill ghosts over Steve's skin at the words, but it's not the Soldier's voice saying them. "They wanted me to kill you. Again."

"One track minds, so uninspired," Tony mutters.

"Then what?" Sam asks. "What were they saying to you? The Russian stuff."

"My trigger words," Bucky says. "They… activate him. The soldier."

"You're not the Soldier, though," Steve says. Maybe the rest of the team needs to be convinced, but he doesn't. The Soldier wouldn't have tugged the hem of his right sleeve down to fidget with. His lips wouldn't be trembling. His eyes wouldn't keep coming back to Steve, tired and worried and raw.  
  
"I knew you," Bucky says. "I wasn't sure why at first, but then…" His eyes flash over to Tony, Sam, and Nat, before briefly skating by Steve again, then settling somewhere on the floor.

"What, Buck? Then what?"

"I could smell you. On my—on your shirt. It was like an itch I couldn't scratch till I saw your picture, and then it was like on that helicarrier, but _ more. _It just—I was awake. I could smell you, and I was awake."

"That's…" Tony begins, then makes a startled sound and takes a half step forward. Natasha doesn't _ appear _ to have just kicked him by the time Steve's eyes land on her, but her quirked eyebrow tells him she definitely did. "Oh come on, it's _ weird," _ Tony says. "But I'm sure in some bizarre way it's very sweet and touching, and doesn't say anything bad about how pungent Cap must be to—"

"Let go of my shirt now, please," Steve says.

"He hasn't_ proven _ anything. He could tell us whatever he wants, you know that, right?"

"If I wanted any of you dead, you would be," Bucky says, fixing Tony with level eyes, even though Steve can see the tremor in his hands has moved up to his shoulders now. "I wish that weren't true, but it is. And you know that."

Tony doesn't let go of Steve right away, but he does know, in the worst way, and eventually his grip loosens. The Soldier's job wasn't to be deceptive and manipulative, it was only to find, and to kill. They're all still standing now, and the Soldier isn't with them.

"Buck," Steve breathes, folding his arms around Bucky as carefully as he can. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Bucky shakes his head, tangled hair brushing Steve's cheek. "I'm okay," he says, and despite the shaking and the bleeding, and all the ways those words aren't true because of _ course _ he's not okay, Steve knows in this moment, just for right now, they are. He is. Because he's still standing, clinging to Steve with arms that know him. Because he could have been lost, but he found himself, he knew himself. 

"I'm okay," he says again. "I need to sit down now."

It's an understatement, because a moment later he's unconscious, but Steve was already holding him. He doesn't let go as they drive through the city in a long, dark car that materializes for Tony out of nowhere, or in the chopper that carries them to Manhattan and deposits them at the top of Avengers Tower. 

"Time to rest, Steve," Natasha says softly, when Bucky has been settled in a clean, narrow bed in the Tower's hospital wing.

"He won't be warm enough," Steve says, though his own brain is too sluggish now to figure out why Bucky doesn't look right with just a white cover spread over him. "He needs—"

"Got it," Sam says. It's briefly baffling to Steve, because Sam didn't come with them. He said he needed to take care of something in D.C. first. "Needs this, right?" he adds, holding up a folded blanket. Knobbly and thick, and every shade of blue.

Natasha cocks an eyebrow, but says nothing when Steve hugs Sam hard around the shoulders, then takes the blanket to tuck it gently around Bucky, right up to his chin. 

"That's a godawful blanket," she says.

"Steve made it," Sam pipes up.

"Hm. Don't quit your day job."

Steve smiles; as if he has some mundane day job. He'd knit a thousand of these ugly blankets though, if Bucky wanted him to.

"Get some sleep, Steve," Sam says. "He's here. He's alright."

The lower half of his left arm isn't even attached anymore. It was already partially severed and badly damaged, but then it started sparking just after they got to the Tower (which still didn't wake Bucky up), and Tony quickly clipped the remaining connections. Steve doesn't know yet what this whole thing will have done to the connections in Bucky's mind. To his fears and his memories and his trust in Steve.

He is alright, though. He's here, he knows who he is. And when he wakes up, Steve's going to be right there, waiting to tell him how goddamn much he loves him. He's missed so many chances, he's been given so many more than he could have hoped for, and there's no way he's going to waste another one. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "No," Bucky says, cracking a tiny smile when Steve blinks at him in surprise. "I don't want another apology from you. It's not your fault it happened, and you found me. With your whole hero brigade."
> 
> "That's not what I was gonna…" Steve looks down at his hands folded in his lap, pink dusting his cheeks. It's somehow extra cute on top of the tiny beginnings of a beard. Always so cute with his big, impossibly broad shoulders. "And you didn't even need us anyway."
> 
> "I needed you," Bucky says, keeping his eyes on Steve until he looks up. "I needed you, and you were there."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got to work with the immensely talented [@em_dibujsb](https://twitter.com/em_dibujsb) for this one, so you'll find her beautiful art within this chapter! And please also go see it full-sized right [here](https://twitter.com/em_dibujsb/status/1196513945223417857?s=20), since it's fairly small here to accommodate mobile scrolling. And then just look at all her art because it's SO soft and always inspiring me ❤️

Bucky wakes up overly warm, and he doesn't ever remember feeling this way before, though he must have of course. In another lifetime, when he and Steve raced through the streets on fire-bright mornings. On muggy evenings when they took turns fanning each other with a folded newspaper. Those are only stories from Steve though, they aren't a part of Bucky that he can slip back into. To remember feeling soaked through with warmth, right down to his core. Without the sense that there's always frost ready to creep in on the edges.

There isn't that sense right now. There's nothing familiar in this quiet room, actually, except the blanket wrapped around him. That's never made him this kind of warm before, though. Never quite enough to chase away the fear that traced through him like another set of veins. The certainty that the ice would spread again the moment HYDRA got their hands on him. 

But they _ did _ get their hands on him, and then he got his hands on them. So to speak. His hands were restrained for most of it, but he was the one standing in the end. And Steve was there to lean into after that. 

Ah, he's _ here_, too. Slumped down on a small, leather sofa between Bucky's bed and the window. Lips slightly parted in sleep. Golden stubble on his jaw that wasn't there before.

"Steve?" Bucky says it softly, because he shouldn't wake him, but he also wants to know what's been happening and where his left hand is. It's not the first time he's woken up missing a part of himself, and at least it's not his own flesh and bone this time, but it's disconcerting all the same. "_Steve." _

Steve makes a little sound like an aborted snore, and his eyes blink open, going from groggy to alert in a breath when he sees Bucky looking at him.

"Bucky! Hey," he says, coming over to sit on the rolling stool right next to Bucky's bed. "Hey," he repeats, more softly. "You look pretty awake this time. Are you _ awake _ awake?"

"I don't… know. I don't remember the other times." Not exactly a brand new experience for him. 

"You were pretty out of it. The doctor said you're just exhausted, but I was… I'm glad you're awake. How are you feeling?"

There's no simple answer to that. He's feeling the residual glow of triumph over getting away from HYDRA, but he's also aware of the tension easing back into him. Because he's in a room he doesn't remember going into. And someone fucked with his arm. And those assholes were inside his head again, even if it wasn't for long. 

"Can you just—here. Can you come here," Bucky says. 

Steve doesn't point out that he's already very close, or that there isn't room on the bed for two super soldiers. He makes it work by only being half on the bed, and it's enough for Bucky. Steve's breath on Bucky's ear, his arm tight around his waist. 

Bucky focuses on that. On his awareness of everything around him. Of the air filling and leaving his lungs. He can trust Steve. He can trust being here. It's making him sweat more than the thick blanket and Steve's heavy arm, but this isn't the same as before. No one's hurting him, and no one's scrubbing him blank and dark and empty like a chalkboard. As long as he breathes Steve in and tells himself this over and over and over again, he can stay in his head. Stay with Steve and not shut down.

Distantly, once the panic has settled to the edges, he's annoyed that he's once again too tired for this closeness to trigger any memories. Even more annoyed that they had the other night stolen from them, when he was awake and wanting and ready to spend hours reclaiming bits of his old self. 

"Tony will fix your arm, if you want him to," Steve says after a while, stroking his fingers down the metal bicep to where it cuts off above the elbow, the exposed ending wrapped in some kind of electrical tape. "He's good with that stuff."

"Why is it gone." He knows it was damaged before, definitely not fully attached anymore, but it was still there.

"It was short circuiting or something, I don't know. It was crackling and sparking and we were afraid it would electrocute you."

Bucky wants to say something about how surely Tony would have been happy to let that happen, but he saw Tony there that night. Bulky and stoic in his big iron suit, right there at Steve's side, because Steve asked him to be. And Bucky's in Tony's home right now. Safe and alive. So…

"Thanks for this," he says instead, touching the chunky loops of the blue blanket.

"Oh, Sam brought it actually."

Huh. Steve's friends are so weird. Spider-Woman was there in that office building, too, and he knows it was for Steve but… well the blanket wasn't for Steve. That was for him.

"I want to shower," he says, since he doesn't know what to say about a man who lost a wing to Bucky, and then brought him a ridiculous blanket because he knew he liked it. 

"Sure," Steve says, sitting up so he's just barely on the edge of the bed. "We should let Dr. Leng know you're awake though. And after they'd like to—" He cuts himself off. "It doesn't matter. For now you should just—"

"They want to what?"

"Just, they'd like to do tests, at some point. Scans of your brain, and of your shoulder and spine? Tony says the arm's the coolest thing he's ever seen, but also a complete monster. He doesn't like the way it's…" Steve brushes a hand over the torn sleeve of Bucky's shirt, where the ring of scar tissue ripples out from his metal shoulder. 

He's still dressed in the same clothes he fought in. No one has run any tests on him yet. Nothing has happened except…

"So I've just been sleeping? No one's…"

"No one's done anything, Buck. I cleaned up the cuts on your face and your arm, and, well…" He touches the metal stump again, where obviously something has been done. "This was kind of urgent, but of course nothing else happened. Not without you saying it's okay. I promised you that."

"Yeah," Bucky says. It's not that he meant to disbelieve him, he's not sure he even realized that he'd doubted it before, but he had. Not Steve's word, but the possibility of Bucky actually existing in a space where this belongs to him. Security and respect and… more than that, too. Something softer and deeper. "They can do tests. If I know what they're doing first. And if you're there. But I don't want—they can't put me in anything."

"Okay," Steve says. "Tony's a wizard. He can figure out how to do what he needs to in a way that's okay with you."

"Alright. After I shower. And eat. And—"

"After whatever you want, Buck," Steve says with a grin. "And hey, listen—"

"No," Bucky says, cracking a tiny smile when Steve blinks at him in surprise. "I don't want another apology from you. It's not your fault it happened, and you found me. With your whole hero brigade."

"That's not what I was gonna…" Steve looks down at his hands folded in his lap, pink dusting his cheeks. It's somehow extra cute on top of the tiny beginnings of a beard. Always so cute with his big, impossibly broad shoulders. "And you didn't even need us anyway."

"I needed you," Bucky says, keeping his eyes on Steve until he looks up. "I needed you, and you were there."

"Buck…" Steve's biting his lip now, looking at Bucky with something in his eyes that Bucky feels the answer to in his chest, but then there are footsteps right outside the cracked open door. A gentle knock announcing the entrance of a dark haired woman in a white jacket.

Bucky doesn't get to focus on Steve's lips or his cheeks for what feels like forever after that. He gets to shower and eat, and then falls right back asleep. Then there's the doctor again, and Tony Stark ghosting around the edge of the room while Bucky's scanned by various devices that make him sweat. Not the one that's supposed to go on his head though, because whatever kind of recovery he's achieved since he followed Steve into the Potomac, it's nowhere fucking near enough for him to be okay with that.

"What if you were unconscious?" Stark asks when they're discussing it a few days after the HYDRA attack. Steve automatically swings an arm out to slam him in the chest, with the most neutral expression on his face all the while. "What! I can _help_ him, but not if I have no _access_ to him."

"I'm not the biggest fan of people poking around in my brain while I have no idea what's happening," Bucky says, as coolly as he can.

"I offered to do it while you _ do _ know what's happening, but you—"

"How about," Sam says loudly, from where he's perched on a stool at the edge of the room, "we drop that for now, and maybe focus on the arm? That's something everyone can agree on, right?"

Tony Stark's eyes light up, and Bucky tries not to physically recoil. It's _ weird, _ how interested he is in the arm. It would be nice to have another hand again though, and Stark thinks he can play off of Bucky's old model to make something lighter and smoother. Something that will even allow Bucky a greater range of sensation.

"You _ are _ going to want to be unconscious when we get that beast off of you," Tony says. "Don't know what the hell they were thinking with the way they latched it on. No elegance."

"Why don't you go work on it, Tony," Steve suggests. "We can figure out the logistics later."

"Fine, sure. One thing though, Barney and Friends..."

Bucky blinks at Tony. He's learned already to just tune out all the things Tony says that he thinks are clever. Bucky never gets the references anyway.

"Where you've got the star now, I'm thinking we'll go with a teddy bear, yeah? To go with your warm and fuzzy demeanor? Unless you had something else in—"

"How about this?" Bucky says, holding up his middle finger.

Tony, rather than being offended as he deserves to, seems absolutely delighted. He beams at Bucky, and Bucky sees it for the first time. The warmth in Tony's face, in his eyes, that is probably what Steve sees most of the time. 

"I mean it's a little on the nose, don't you think?" Tony says, playing along like he and Bucky are something in the same vein as friends, which is impossible because Bucky killed his goddamn parents. "But if you're fine being basic…"

"Just give me a hand, so I can give you two of these," Bucky says, the only middle finger at his disposal still raised in Tony's direction. 

"This one's gonna be a bad influence on you, Cap. Terrible thing for that squeaky clean image of yours."

"You choose to think I'm a lot more squeaky clean than I am," Steve points out, and Bucky's sure that's true. He's sure Tony Stark plays it up as much as possible just to make Steve look harassed, which… isn't unrelatable.

Tony just gives Steve a bright grin, then turns a quick assessing glance at Bucky before excusing himself to go work in his lab. 

Eventually Sam has to leave too, but by that point Natasha has returned. Bucky really doesn't mind her, but between the Avengers and the doctors he's never alone with Steve at all, and it's starting to drive him crazy.

"Are they still afraid I'm going to kill you?" he asks, when they have a few minutes to themselves while Natasha grabs coffee. "I'm not, Steve, I'm—"

"I know that," Steve says. "They know that."

"Then why are they always here? I'm not gonna snap. Something... something's different now. I don't feel…" He doesn't feel like the ice is a breath away from taking him. He doesn't feel helpless, now that he's faced exactly what he feared and he's still Bucky. Tied too tightly now to Steve for them to pull him away without a fight and make him someone else.

"Buck," Steve says, when Bucky's words don't pick up again. "No one thinks you're going to snap. Why didn't you tell me you thought that? They're here because they _ like _you and they want to be around. They want to know you're okay."

Bucky shakes his head slowly. "They don't even know me."

"They've spent the last three days doing nothing but getting to know you."

"They've just been watching me get hounded by all of Stark's weird robots."

"_You're _a weird robot," Steve says automatically, then blushes and tries to backtrack. "Sorry, sorry, you're not, that was just a jo—"

"Steven Grant Rogers, did you just _ sass _ me?"

Steve grins, and it's so genuine, so boyish and familiar. It calls up all the smiles Bucky's been saving in his head. The memories of Steve at twelve and sixteen and twenty. Eyes bright with mischief in his pale, narrow face. 

"Buck," Steve says, smile softening, "I—"

"Do you know how goddamn far I had to walk to find this tea for you, Barnes?" Natasha says, shouldering the door open. Her hands are occupied with a beverage tray and a paper bag. "Why can't you just drink coffee like every other red-blooded American?"

"Because I'm a robot," Bucky says blandly as he accepts the tall cup she hands him, smiling to himself when she snorts and Steve blushes.

He doesn't get to be alone with Steve again all day, but it isn't terrible. He and Natasha have a fair amount in common, and she brought a bag full of chocolate filled croissants, which are maybe even better than bacon. She's great at bantering with Steve, too, and Bucky doesn't get tired of watching that. Steve getting flustered. His lips tipping up with a bit of smug pride when he says something clever. His cheeks going bright with color when Bucky and Natasha team up on him, and Bucky feels something bright in his chest too, like this is familiar. Being comfortable around people. Around friends. 

They spend another week and a half in Tony's hospital wing, and by the end of it Bucky has his own Stark approved doctor, a Stark approved psychologist, and a Stark approved left arm. In the end he did choose to be unconscious for the surgery, because being sedated enough to do it while awake scared him even more. He had strict rules, though. Rules that included Steve and Sam being there the whole time, and the entire operation being filmed so Bucky would have proof that absolutely nothing was done to him other than what he'd agreed to. 

"We call that acute paranoia," Tony had said, when Bucky laid everything out.

"My therapist says it's an acceptable level of caution given my experiences," Bucky had countered. "And you have every reason to 'accidentally' kill me, so…"

"Oh my God," Tony huffed. "Kill you and face the collective wrath of your fanclub?" He raised his eyebrows at Steve, Sam, and Natasha. "Kill you and never get to see the _ fucking amazing _ arm I've made you put to use? I've designed a lot of cool shit before, but _ this—" _

"Telling him you're only leaving him alive because you want him to wear the arm you made is… maybe not the direction I'd go," Natasha said.

"You're gonna love this arm," Tony said, as if she hadn't spoken.

Bucky didn't mind, though. He needed to be in control of as much of the operation as he could be for his own peace of mind, but not because he really thought Tony would kill him. Tony built him an _ arm, _and despite his show of resistance, he went along with everything Bucky asked for. He walked him through every detail, every step that would be taken to remove the old arm and prepare him for the new one. He brought Bucky down to his lab beforehand to show him what he'd made and how he'd made it. It was a completely different experience from the first time around, when no one asked him or told him a single fucking thing. Just cut him up and put him back together and left him alone.

This time, there's no horror. He wakes up already knowing what to expect, the new arm already familiar. It's a dark chrome, without a red star to mark him as someone else's, and it barely whispers when Bucky moves it. The weight of it is natural, like his right arm. It doesn't tug at his skin or weigh on his spine. It's just… there. Drawing his attention only because it _ doesn't _ draw his attention.

Steve is there too, like he promised, and when he slips his hand into Bucky's new metal one, even though they're not alone, Bucky gasps. Tony told him how different it would be, but to actually feel it—to feel not only the pressure of Steve's fingers but the warmth of them, a hint of pleasure at the light touch—it almost takes his breath away.

"We can make adjustments," Tony says, "if it's too weak or strong. It'll just take a little tinkering."

The best thing about it is that it's easy to tinker with. It's possible for Bucky to disconnect it and take it right off, with no pain, if he wants to be without it. He hasn't gotten used to that feeling yet, but he thinks maybe it would be nice to try. It feels good on, though. Nothing like the old arm. With all Tony's adjustments, by the time Bucky is finally discharged, it feels as close to his flesh and blood arm as he imagines it possibly could. 

Still, though, they won't be leaving the Tower yet.

"Just for a little while," Steve says once they've settled into the suite of rooms that belongs to him. "So Tony's close if anything pops up with the arm. And so—"

"I know," Bucky says. He does understand, and he doesn't mind that much. He knows it's good to have this team Tony's given him close by, to have support around every corner as he adjusts to therapy and medication and this arm that still feels like a dream. Neither of them really want to go to the old apartment now anyway, not after HYDRA found its way in. They have a lot of decisions to make, and Bucky can't rush that. A lot of hard work that won't be quite so hard if it's not done alone. He gets that, he appreciates it, but—

"I've missed you," Steve says, and the tension Bucky didn't realize he was holding in his shoulders eases out. That's what it is. He just goddamn misses being in a quiet little bubble with Steve, and he's glad he's not the only one.

"Your friends are… attentive."

"So are yours," Steve says with a quirk of his lips. "But look, we can lock ourselves in now. Cook, read, nap. Whatever we want. Just you and me."

That's all Bucky wants, that last part. And it probably doesn't matter if it's in an apartment somewhere else, or if it's right here.

They nap next to each other on the big bed in Steve's room, shoulders and fingers brushing but only setting off a soft heat in Bucky's chest, and a few hazy images in his head before he's unconscious. They make lunch after in the high tech, sparkling kitchen, and then spend the afternoon on Steve's laptop out on the sunny deck off the living room. They're supposed to be ordering clothes for Bucky so he can stop living in Steve's, but Steve introduces him to something called YouTube instead, and somehow time disappears with no shopping getting done at all. There are just so many animals doing funny things.

"It's probably for the best," Steve says. "I'm not exactly a fashion expert."

Bucky looks over Steve's khaki pants and plain white T-shirt, and doesn't find anything wrong with them. Steve looks clean and classic. He looks handsome as hell. Golden and warm in the late afternoon sun. Soft somehow, even with all his hard lines. 

"You're not bad," Bucky says. He's not sure if Steve knows what an understatement that is. The hint of color in his ears says maybe he does. God, if only Bucky could remember more. If he knew for sure where they stood in the past, and if it's okay for things to be different now. Maybe Steve didn't want him before, and maybe Bucky was stupid enough to not want Steve, but it seems like...it feels like—

"Buck, I've been thinking."

"Is that why your face looks like that?" Bucky asks, resisting the urge to reach out and smooth the wrinkle between Steve's brows with his thumb.

"Shut up, jerk. I was just—there's something I wanted to try. If you're up for it."

"What?" 

Steve pulls his lower lip between his teeth and lets it go. Bucky feels… a lot of things. 

"I've just been thinking about what you said before, about how you usually remember things when I touch you?"

Bucky nods. He's been thinking about that constantly. Waiting and waiting to get a chance to curl up next to Steve when he isn't too drained to stay awake. Like the way he's feeling now.

"So I was… I was wondering if touching more, or longer or whatever, would help you remember more?"

"Still trying to get me naked, Rogers?" Bucky asks, but he's a little too breathless to sound convincingly cavalier.

Steve just bites his lip again, and Bucky really does lose his breath.

"Let's go inside, 'kay?"

Bucky nods. He doesn't trust himself to put words together. They go back to Steve's bedroom where the light is lower, sunlight filtering in softly through the covers over the windows. 

"So what—" Bucky begins, when they're standing near the foot of the bed.

"Can I touch you?" Steve asks. He has to mean it a lot more innocently than Bucky hears it, because he isn't even blushing. He raises his hands when Bucky nods, touches just the tips of his fingers so lightly to Bucky's face. Skims them up the lines of his cheekbones, down along the edges of his jaw. 

Bucky isn't remembering anything. He's locked here, right now, with Steve's thumb brushing just below his lips. 

"You can touch me too, you know," Steve says softly, his hands moving down to Bucky's shoulders. "If you want."

Bucky means to laugh, but he just makes a breathy sort of sound that he'll pretend didn't come out of him. Of course he wants. The heat rising in his chest tells him maybe he always has. 

He takes Steve's face in his hands just as Steve's arms come around Bucky's back, pulling him in so close that their foreheads touch.

"Okay?" Steve asks, hands stroking lightly up and down Bucky's spine, and breath warm on his face. 

It's so much. So, so much, because Bucky is touching Steve with both hands, and he _ feels _ him, his strong bones and his soft skin. He feels the heat of him in his palms and it almost knocks the wind out of him.

"Steve," he manages in a choked voice, fingers sliding into golden hair, thick and familiar. Pulling himself closer so he can bury his face in the crook of Steve's neck. Press into him from head to toe so it's not Bucky and Steve, it's just _ them. _ Just them, and a solar flare in Bucky's chest. Like the first time Steve hugged him, but more, so much more this time. Exploding out from his core to cartwheel through his limbs and dance brighter than stars behind his eyes. To sing in every one of his finger tips.

Each flash of color and burn of heat is something remembered, something restored. His mother's quiet laugh, his first broken bone, the gunshot pain of saying goodbye to Steve with the lights of Stark Expo bright and hopeful at their backs. It's too much, but not enough at the same time. He knows this is just a taste of it, of everything he could drink in if he could just get deeper somehow. 

"Steve, fuck, I need—can we—" He's wrestling with Steve's shirt without deciding to, wanting to get closer to him.

"You're—Buck you're shaking, just wait. Let's—here, come here," Steve says pulling Bucky onto the bed with him. 

Between the two of them they get sweaters and undershirts off, get pants kicked out of the way. When they come together again, stretched out on their sides now, they're both down to their boxers and all Bucky can feel is Steve. He's everywhere, everywhere, bright as a fire in the night. A sun that's heating Bucky inside and out, sending offshoots of light right through his bones.

Then Steve presses his face to Bucky's bare shoulder, lips right there against his skin, and something in Bucky breaks. He's crying before he even registers it. Before his mind starts to catch up with everything flying through it. Whirling by like a carousel of colorful horses, but every horse is a piece of himself.

He remembers, and remembers, and remembers, and everything is fractured—never quite beginning, never quite ending—but it doesn't matter. It's not what he's seeing. Not the endless snapshots of Steve scowling or laughing or tying Bucky's tie for him with quick, bony fingers. It's the depth of what Bucky feels in every single memory. The way he felt then, when he wasn't a soldier, and Steve wasn't a national hero, and the only thing he knew—the only thing that ever mattered and ever would—was that being Bucky meant loving Steve Rogers with every last bit of his heart.

He pushes away from Steve with a start, falling onto his back, then sitting up on his knees so he can face Steve. Steve who is flushed and bewildered, just now grasping that Bucky isn't in his arms anymore.

"Wha—are you okay?" he asks, sitting up too. Reaching for Bucky but not quite touching him. "What—"

"_Why?" _ Bucky says. "Why would you lie to me?"

"_What? _ When?"

"You said we were just friends, before."

"We _ were," _Steve says, eyes wide under creased brows.

"And that I didn’t love you," Bucky goes on. "_Love _ you, love you."

"You _ didn’t, _ Bucky! You—"

"Yes, I goddamn did! In _ every single _ memory I have I’m in love with you, Steve. Every one!"

Steve goes so still, so suddenly, it's like he's become a photograph. An oil painting of a perfect golden man on his knees, with round blue eyes, and pale lips parted. 

Bucky feels the same thing looking at him now that he felt looking at every version of Steve in his head—the skinny, hard of hearing boy with a perpetual split lip and something to prove to the whole damn world; the tall, sturdy Captain who still smiled at Bucky the same way he always had, like they were in on something together. He feels… warm. Warm like the good blanket is wrapped around him. Warm like he's an ember just waiting to stop glowing and start burning instead, if only he knew it was okay to. 

_ That's _ what it was, that feeling he couldn't name, in all the memories that have come back to him since the helicarrier. Not just the love he remembers now, but that _ need, _ that desperate, desperate ache. It was longing.

Longing his whole life for Steve to feel the same way.

* * *

"Did you... not know?" Bucky asks.

Steve is still reeling, thoughts just barely beginning to fall into place again, but he shakes his head. He didn't. He didn't know.

"But—"

"You didn't tell me," Steve says. "You never told me, Buck."

"Because I knew you wouldn't—?"

"_No, _that's… you must have thought that, but... you were wrong."

Bucky is quiet now, watching Steve steadily with his lips pressed together.

"I didn't know you loved me like that, Bucky, I swear I didn't. You _ know _ I can't lie for shit. But I've always… God, I've _ always _ wanted you to."

There's a long beat of silence, and then another. Just Bucky's clear blue eyes, his beautiful face turned to Steve, so Steve can watch everything that washes over it. Surprise. Disbelief. A tiny smile that takes hold slowly and then grows and grows.

"Well, I do," he says simply, softly. "And you..."

"And I'm in love with you, Buck, of course I am. I'm in love with you now, I was in love with you then. I'm—"

"Stevie," Bucky says, voice cracking. 

Steve's heart cracks too. Not from sorrow, but from being too full, much too full, to keep itself together. How could it, with Bucky saying his name the way he used to, saying it in the voice that belongs to him now, because _ this _ Bucky knows Steve. _ This _ Bucky loves him. 

It's so good to know that he always has, so good to be able to give pieces of the past back to him, but it's the memories they're in the process of making that mean everything now. It's the man Bucky is right at this moment, looking at Steve with something old and something new in his eyes, soft in his smile. Reaching out to touch Steve's face and trail fingertips over his lips.

"We've never kissed, then. I didn't forget it."

Steve shakes his head. "No, when we—if we… it will be the first time. You didn't miss it."

"Even when you wore those tights?" Bucky's smile has gone sly. "I didn't kiss you then?"

"You never saw me in them. Not in person."

"A goddamn tragedy," Bucky says. It makes Steve want to cry a little, the way he says it so lightly. As if his life hasn't been a series of actual godforsaken tragedies since he fell away from Steve. 

"Buck—"

"Don't," Bucky says. "Don't be sad, not right now."

"I'm not _ sad, _ I'm just—"

"It wasn't your fault," Bucky says with a slow shake of his head, like he wants to be doubly sure Steve is clear on this.

"But if—"

"It _ wasn't _ your fault. And I'm here now. We're here."

"I know," Steve says, looking down at his knees because it's just so much, all of this. He doesn't know how Bucky can even process their entire past and their present at once, and be the one touching Steve's shoulder with a steady hand now. "I know, I'm… it's just—"

Bucky holds Steve's chin, pressing up carefully with his metal fingers until Steve is looking at him again. "_I _think," he says, "it's high time we kissed."

Steve nods his head, lips wobbly even though he wants to smile.

"If it's not great, remember this has had like ninety years of build-up, and I can't be expected to live up to that."

A laugh breaks out of Steve and he shifts closer to Bucky, setting his hands at his waist. "I'll keep that in mind," he says.

"And if I get overwhelmed and melt down or something—"

"That's okay too," Steve promises him. It doesn't have to be perfect for it to be everything Steve has been waiting for. It just needs to be Bucky. "I don't—"

Bucky doesn't wait for him to finish, now that his caveats are out of the way. He just cups Steve's face between his hands—one hot, one cool—and presses his lips to Steve's.

There's no attempt to impress him. No fancy tricks, no surprises. Just soft lips and the scent of home. Fingers steady on Steve's skin, holding him close so they can breathe each other in while they slowly find how their mouths fit together best.

They take their time with it. They've been apart for so, so long after all, there's no reason to rush coming back together. Bucky kisses him like they have the entirety of time and space spread out before them. Like there's nothing else he has to do for the next hundred years but hold Steve's face like it's the holy grail, and learn the feel of his lips just as well as he knows the rest of him. 

It's dizzying, and it's _ good, _and Steve has never been as patient as Bucky.

"Tryin' to bruise me there, pal?" Bucky asks with a soft laugh against Steve's cheek. It's possible Steve's grip on Bucky's waist has become progressively more vice-like as their slow kisses have gotten deeper by infinitesimal degrees. The quiet insistence of Bucky's lips, the hints of slick heat when his tongue just barely brushes Steve's—the power it has to make Steve's heart stutter seems at odds with the gentleness of Bucky's hands on him. 

"I'm just—" He's breathless is what he is. He barely sounds like himself, and all they've done is kiss each other softly while the light through the curtains has deepened from afternoon gold to the rich, burnt orange of sunset. "You feel so good, Buck, I'm... maybe I'm the one getting overwhelmed."

Bucky leans back a little, shaking his head. "Not just you. I gotta go slow so I can catch it all. All the ways I've loved you."

"More memories?" Steve asks, a catch in his voice. He can still barely believe it. All those years of them both thinking they couldn't have it all, when it was right here waiting for them.

"Hm," Bucky says with a nod. "Just little pieces, but they're good, they're…I feel like even if it's only ever just little bits like this, I can…"

"What, Buck?" Steve asks, turning just enough to bump Bucky's ear with the tip of his nose, then brush his lips against his jaw.

"I'm no artist, not like you. But I think I…" He breathes out slowly when Steve kisses just below his ear, fingers curling in the waistband of Steve's boxers. His eyes are closed when Steve looks up at him. Hair slipping from the low bun he'd pulled it into earlier. Lips red from Steve's moving against them. "I think I can make something pretty beautiful with them."

"I think," Steve says, tucking a lock of hair behind Bucky's ear, "you already have."

Bucky's eyes open, narrowed and smiling. "The hell's that even mean, Rogers?"

"I don't know," Steve admits, smiling right back at him. "Just... you're perfect, and I'm _ happy, _ and I'm—"

He's knocked onto his back, pushed down under Bucky's weight, with curved lips pressed somewhere around his collarbone. 

"Goddammit, Stevie," Bucky growls into his skin, "your face when you smile like that. You have any idea what a handsome piece of shit you are?"

"I remember you being more romantic than that with your girls, you know."

"That part hasn't come back to me yet. This is what you get."

Steve heaves a dramatic sigh, his whole chest filling up with something buoyant and precious at the feeling of Bucky's body on top of his, rising with him. "I guess it'll do," he says, earning himself a light nip on his earlobe. "Can I kiss you again, Buck?"

He doesn't want to push when he already has so much. Bucky's in just a tight pair of black boxer briefs, straddling Steve's thighs, and his hair's come right out of its bun now to brush soft over Steve's skin. Steve could stare at him forever and a day, and not need a single thing more.

Bucky nods though, shifting to lie down on his side next to Steve. Turning Steve to face him with a hand on his hip.

"Slow," he says, and Steve nods too, leaning in to do just that. To kiss Bucky soft and careful, the way he wants. To soak in every sensation, every tiny bit of movement that makes up their lips coming together, and apart, and together again. To let Bucky be there with him, and somewhere else with him at the same time, in all those little pieces he's collecting while Steve holds him as close as his own heart. 

"How are you doing?" he asks after a little while. Bucky is breathing harder now, they both are, and Steve doesn't know if the way Bucky's grip is tightening means he wants more or needs less. 

"I think... I've overloaded on memories for now," Bucky says. "They've stopped coming."

"We can rest," Steve says, running his fingers down Bucky's cheek. "We can—"

"No, I don't want—I'm not kissing you to remember, you idiot. I'm kissing you to _ kiss _ you."

"I—no, I know, but I just—" Steve pauses, floundering. He _ did _ know that, but hearing it makes him feel like a kite on the wind. Weightless and shivering, and grounded only by Bucky's strong hands. "It's tiring though, isn't it? Having so much come back to you?"

"It is," Bucky agrees. "In a nice way."

"Good," Steve says. "But even so, if you need a break—"

"I can lie back and let you do all the work?" Bucky supplies, cocking an eyebrow at Steve and looking for all the world like he did at nineteen. That face he'd give Steve when he teased him. The one that wasn't all that different from the look he'd turn on a pretty girl at the dance hall, and always left Steve with something light and fluttery in his stomach.

"You just love being kissed, don't you Bucky Barnes?"

He's teasing, but Bucky looks at him thoughtfully, running the tip of his tongue over his lips. "I've remembered some," he says. "With a pretty redhead. And a quiet one with her hair in a braid. Cara, or—"

"Clara," Steve says. He remembers soft-spoken Clara with her long brown hair, and the way Bucky could make her laugh like no one else could. "She was a real nice girl."

"Probably was. Probably kissing her was nice too. But it didn't… remembering it didn't make me feel the same."

"The same as…"

"As just looking at you."

There's a flood of heat in Steve's face that makes its way right down his neck to his chest. It's the kind of thing Bucky would say to a girl he was sweet on, but not the same at all because he's saying it to Steve. And he's saying it with these big earnest eyes that have seen so goddamn much, but have set themselves on Steve again, against all odds.

"Jesus, Buck."

"You said you wanted romance. And I mean it."

"I know you do, that's why it's… that's—" Steve doesn't know what he's trying to say. That's why his heart is bursting, why he's flustered and humbled and aching, and a million other things.

"I love being kissed by you, Steve Rogers," Bucky says. "Kiss me again."

Steve's always been the bossy one, but this reversal is good, too. He could really, happily get used to this. "If you need to stop…"

"I'll tell you. I don't want to stop now, I just want—"

Steve doesn't need to be told twice. How many times has he thought about this? About climbing on top of Bucky and kissing him till his head spins?

"Me too," he says, pressing Bucky gently onto his back and following him down. 

He can't kiss him right away though, because now he's looking at him, at his deep brown hair spread over the white sheets, and he's so beautiful. He's so goddamn beautiful. His eyes have always been mercurial—sometimes almost grey, sometimes the brightest blue—and right now they're warmer than Steve's ever seen them. Framed by those long lashes that have always driven him to distraction. Turned up to Steve, open and waiting. 

It occurs to Steve—as he leans down to touch his lips to Bucky's, feeling that ache in his center that accompanies his constant desire to give Bucky the world—that he really doesn't have to. It's not what Bucky wants. He's warm underneath Steve, drawing him closer with broad hands firm on Steve's back, mouth opening soft and easy and letting out a quiet sound that says _ this, _ this is what he wants. What Steve has had to offer all along, but didn't know he could. Just himself. His heart. His hands and his lips telling Bucky how much he's loved. 

He pours it into Bucky kiss by kiss—along his jaw and his collarbone, down his sternum, across his ribs—and Bucky soaks it up like a flower in the heat of summer. Opening up to him, blooming with color. A pink flush all over his chest, a dark red blossoming under Steve's lips, low on Bucky's stomach, that makes Bucky gasp and tighten his fingers in Steve's hair.  
  
"Okay?" Steve asks.

"_Yeah, _ yes, Steve—"

Steve kisses him again, on his hipbone, his dusky brown nipple, the pink, scarred skin of his shoulder before it moves from flesh to metal, and he kisses the metal, too. 

"I love you," he whispers into Bucky's shoulder, and then again into the hollow of his throat. "I love you, Buck, I love you."

Bucky's silent beneath him, but his hands tremble on Steve's skin and Steve looks up quickly. Worried only for a moment before he sees Bucky's face—eyes wide and blue and filled up with tears, but not afraid. 

"It's always been you and me, huh?" he says, and Steve nods.

"Always gonna be," he promises. 

Bucky nods too, and his eyes are still big and soft, but his chin gets firm. His cheeks hollowing under strong, angled bones as he squares his jaw. 

Steve knows this face. This was the face looking down at him when Bucky asked Steve not to follow him into the war. The face looking across at Steve in the warm yellow light of a bar in England, telling Steve he'd go straight back into the fight with him and follow him anywhere. This is what he's always loved about Bucky, this dichotomy in his expression that he's seen so many times. The way Bucky's brave as hell, steady and determined and firm in whatever he believes is right, but he's never hard. He wears his big, beautiful heart right there in his eyes, bright and soft and honest.

"Till the end of the line," Bucky says.

He's said that more times than Steve can count, in years long passed, but it sounds like something new, now. Spoken with bare skin touching, and eyes wet, and lips red from the taste of each other. 

"Yeah," Steve says, and he tries to say more, but Bucky's face is a century of sunrises at once and Steve can't bear that much beauty. 

He ducks his own face into Bucky's neck and Bucky's arms come around him tight, pulling him in just as crushingly close as he did before. When he was remembering things and Steve was just igniting inside from the joy of their proximity. He turns them so Steve is beneath him, and now he's the one kissing Steve again, but his restraint has given way to something hungry and heated. The metal of his left hand is almost hot from so much time moving over Steve's skin. His whole body is burning, pressed to Steve's from head to toe, hard against the groove of Steve's hip.

Steve gasps at the feel of him, at him wanting Steve and not hiding it. At the way he grinds down so he can feel Steve wanting him too.

"Buck...Bucky—"

"We can stop," Bucky says, rough voice falling right next to Steve's ear. "If you—"

"_No, _ no, I don't want—unless you want to?"

Bucky makes a sound more like a growl than anything else, and it must mean _ no _ because he goes right back to kissing Steve, his stubble rough against Steve's jaw and his lips so soft. He laces his fingers between Steve's, fits their hips together so when Steve arches his back their cocks slide hard alongside each other through their underwear. 

Steve wants the clinging cotton out of the way, but he doesn't want to stop moving, doesn't want to let go of Bucky's hands, so they stay just like that. Fingers clenched tight while Bucky rocks against him, kisses him like Steve is his air and his reason and the choice that he's made, and Steve kisses him back just the same. Moaning when the pleasure low in his belly gets sharp and raw. Crying out when Bucky bites Steve's lip and pins his hips down with his own, shuddering against Steve with erratic jerks until he's spilling between them with a gasp. Soaking hot and sticky through his boxers to Steve's skin.

"Stevie," he mumbles, letting go of Steve's hands to prop himself up on his elbow and kiss Steve's forehead—his cheek, his nose, his chin—while his left hand palms slowly down Steve's chest and stomach to cup his cock, wet and straining in his boxers. "Can I? I wanna touch you."

"Yes, Buck, _ please," _ Steve says. 

There's a whine in his voice and he doesn't care. He's so, so close, and Bucky hasn't stopped kissing him. Doesn't stop even once he's slipped his hand in Steve's underwear to circle him with careful fingers, to jerk him with slow, deliberate strokes, from base to tip, that have Steve arching off the bed again. Panting against Bucky's lips until his vision goes white, his whole body tight and hot as a firecracker about to fly apart, and then he's coming in Bucky's hand. Coming with Bucky's lips on his skin, his fingers stroking Steve's hair while he whispers to him low and soft all the way through it. Taking care of him like he always has. 

He lets go of Steve's cock only when Steve starts to soften and shiver, wrapping him back up in his arms so they're heart to heart again, and Steve can feel him shivering too. 

"You alright?" Steve asks. "That was...God, Bucky, that—"

"Perfect, it was perfect," Bucky says with his forehead on Steve's shoulder. Steve could cry just from knowing he was able to give Bucky this. Able to touch him with love and let him be overwhelmed with pleasure instead of pain. "I'm good, I am, I'm just—"

Steve nods and holds him as close as he can, keeping him steady while everything he's feeling moves through him. Smoothing his hair and saying his name over and over because he doesn't want to stop. He's never going to. 

"This is real, right?" Bucky asks after some time, when he's not trembling anymore, but still holding Steve so tight. "This is really happening? I'm not—"

"It's real, Buck, I promise. This is us. Now."

It's so close to Steve's old dreams, but it isn't the same. It's not a fantasy. They're older, scarred, changed. They've made it to the future together and they've found something here that they never had before. 

"Okay," Bucky says, going soft and heavy in Steve's arms. It's not like the way he's said that word before, when Steve wasn't sure he meant it. He sounds certain, and Steve's so glad he can tell the difference. "Okay, good."

Steve kisses the side of his head, reaching over him to grab the blanket on the edge of the bed. The one Bucky loves. He spreads it over them so Bucky will feel as safe and warm and good as he deserves to. So he'll know that this is really their reality. That this Bucky, who turned up at this Steve's apartment and fell asleep in his bed, has made his way to this moment. Because it was what Bucky wanted. Because what Bucky wants matters. 

"You're sure you're—" Steve begins, wanting to be absolutely certain there's nothing Bucky needs. Nothing more than Steve wrapped around him.

"Shh, Stevie," Bucky says, the words slurred and soft with exhaustion. "You talk so much. Always talk so much."

"I know," Steve says, smiling even though Bucky's eyes are closed. Maybe he can feel it against his cheek with Steve pressed so close. "I know, I just—"

"Shut up," Bucky says, sounding like his old self, and his new self, and something even more brand new on top of that, because they're mostly naked, and tacky with everything that's dried between them, and they've never been this close. "I love you Steve, I really do, just...shh now, okay? Just sleep with me."

"Okay," Steve agrees, but he's smiling so hard and his chest is so full he doesn't know how he'll ever settle down.

"An' make me breakfast tomorrow."

"I will," Steve promises, even though he knows Bucky will end up helping him. Scolding him and stepping in when Steve leaves things on the stove for too long. "I'll make anything you want."

Bucky must be too tired to grumble about Steve offering up too many options. He just curls into Steve, rubs his nose against his chest with a little contented sigh that almost ends Steve right there on the spot, and falls asleep with his head tucked under Steve's chin. 

"Oh, God," Steve breathes, and he means it as truly as any prayer. This is all that he's wanted. This is something he thought time and time again he could never have. Something he watched fall away from him in a flurry of terror and snow. 

But now here he is, and Bucky's here with him—_wanting _ to be here—and Steve gets to be the one to keep him warm. He'll get to wake up in the morning to sleepy blue eyes and a soft smile. Or in the middle of the night, if Bucky needs him. If they have to chase the ice away again and again. 

They'll do it, he knows they will. Steve has spent his whole damn life fighting for what's right, and there's nothing, he's certain, that is more right than this. This man. This heart beating right next to his own, strong and steady in this peace they've found together.

Steve will gladly spend the rest of their lives fighting for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more gigantic thank you to Essie, Val, and RC for being the fucking best while I was writing/posting this (and always), and to Em for being the very sweetest and bringing Steve and Bucky's kiss to life with so much heart and warmth. All of my love to all of you ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
> 
> And thank you for reading!! You can find my other stucky fics [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&include_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=110293&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&user_id=Ellessey), and can find me continually singing their praises (and Sebastian Stan's) on twitter at [elliebbarnes](https://twitter.com/elliebbarnes).


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